Chrysalis
by christinaking
Summary: "And when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful." - Ruskin Bond. Rated M for later chapters. Demily.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: You people and your prompts! LOL. I really need to get back to Half the Sky. But I love character exploration, and tomorrow I have my first full-day software training, so this new story was an easier respite from my nerves than plagues and end-of-the-world scenarios. You're just gonna have to trust me with this story and roll with it. I adore all of my readers! Seriously! Just hold onto your panties with this one. xoxoxo _

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><p><em>They buried her on a Saturday. The sun was shining and it was surprisingly warm and sunny in the graveyard on the outer edges of London in the middle of April. Derek stood there with Penelope clutching his hand, a steady stream of tears running down her face. JJ stood on his other side, also with tears; Will was holding her hand. Hotch and Rossi stood behind him, stoic and tearless, but their faces a mask of sadness. And then there was Reid, who was inconsolable. None of them ever thought Emily would stay away as long as she had, none of them thought her move to London would ever be permanent, none of them could believe that she'd been murdered before she could come home. <em>

_They hadn't carried the casket; they hadn't been asked to. The casket was carried by men they didn't know, except Clyde Easter. Emily had been in London for almost three years at that point and her connections had changed. _

_The insignificant associate of Doyle's who'd been released from a prison in France a few weeks before didn't even cause a blip on their radar, according to Clyde Easter. Emily was not the reason he was in prison, her profile delivered after they'd extricated her from Doyle over a decade before barely included him. Marcus Simonton was in prison because of his own carelessness. Still, prison can do strange things to people, skew their perspective. It wasn't until it was too late that anyone realized that while he was in prison, Simonton had developed an all-encompassing hate for Emily Prentiss. _

_One bullet from a rifle while Emily was walking between her car and the front door of her building the week before was all it took for everyone to realize they had all been too relaxed when Simonton had been released from prison. They had him on surveillance, fleeing the scene after the shot was taken, and he was still at large. _

_And Emily was dead. It was an odd sense of deja vu for the team; they'd buried her before. Only this time, it was JJ's gasps of despair, absent at Emily's funeral in 2011, that let them all feel the reality and permanence of this. It was 2015, and Emily wasn't going to walk in their door seven months from now with an apologetic look on her face. _

_Derek stood there with his jaw clenched, masking his emotions, trying not to think, not shedding a tear. There was one brief flash of thought, that even after all her time away from them, the one person he would call on such an afternoon to share his grief was the person currently in a casket in the ground. _

_He completely shut down after that thought flitted through his mind, and mechanically bent to take a handful of dirt in his hand, tossing it gently on her casket, and saying a silent goodbye. But he didn't let himself feel, not really. He just couldn't let in the full reality without it taking him down. So he didn't. He shut down and locked his true self away. He put a comforting arm around Penelope when they walked back towards their vehicles. Though he felt there was a hole in his heart the size of the Grand Canyon, he decided to pretend it didn't hurt as much as it did. _

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><p>Savannah moved efficiently through the house, a stack of empty boxes available in which to pack her belongings. They'd already divided the larger furniture, and Derek watched her from a distance while she moved quietly through the house with a stiff back and a blank expression. This was her decision and he didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry," wasn't right because he wasn't really sorry. He'd tried, but his job and hers were too pressure-laden for either of them to handle well.<p>

They were both stubborn, both unwilling to change that part of their lives for the other, and a couple of weeks before she'd told him it was over and she was moving out. It wasn't difficult for him to accept her decision. They didn't hate each other, but the current emotional climate was one of hurt and apprehension.

He watched her move to the bookcase in the living room and instantly tensed as her hand closed over the spine of a book. He moved quickly away from his vantage point on the couch and towards her. "That's mine," he said firmly, taking the book in his hand and pulling it away from her.

He could see in her eyes that it hadn't been purposeful. "Sorry," she said quietly. Derek nodded at her and clutched the book in his hands. He didn't release it from his grip for the rest of the afternoon while he watched her pack. She could take anything else she wanted in that house, but she couldn't take that book.

Several hours later, when the boxes were packed and loaded into the truck, and Savannah was pulling away from the curb and from his life permanently, he finally opened the book in his hands and found the note inside.

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><p><em>Two months after his encounter with Carl Buford, when all of his secrets had come stumbling out in front of the team, and he was trying valiantly to put his life back together and not act embarrassed or ashamed in front of his colleagues, she confided in him. He didn't expect her to because she seemed to hold it pretty close to the vest. But joking with her about being Vonnegut fans and book nerds had been refreshing. She was the only one on the team who didn't look at him with concern and sadness. Maybe it was because she had only known him for a couple of weeks before that ill-fated trip and case erupted in Chicago. <em>

_Maybe that was it, but he didn't really believe it. There was some sense of understanding there, something in her eyes that told him she knew about scars and secrets. She opened up to him to let him know that he was still a regular guy to her, a work friend, a potential real friend, and he found it refreshing. _

_When their current case finished and they all went home and their separate ways, he found himself with an inexplicable desire to see her and talk. _

_He normally wasn't so bold, but he showed up at her door with a six-pack of beer that night. And she let him in, not seeming put out at all that he'd found out where she lived and had come over without calling. _

_They drank beer and ate chips and laughed and talked about books. At one point late into the evening, the words, "I escaped into books because I didn't have anywhere else to go," tumbled from his lips. _

_He felt the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, the hand of a friend he didn't know well at all, but he looked in her eyes and saw no judgement there. For the first time he felt he could express emotions about what had happened in Chicago, what had happened to him as a teenager, without it coming back to bite him at work the next day. _

_For the first time since he was ten years old and he'd cried in his mother's arms after his dad died, he sobbed. And Emily had pulled him against her and wrapped her arms around him and just let him. She didn't say anything much, but he didn't need words, he just needed to let it all out. _

_That night he slept on her couch and got up early the next morning to go home and dress for work. When she arrived at the BAU a few minutes after him, he was nervous at first. But she acted like the night before hadn't happened. She became his friend who knew his deepest secrets before she'd already been his friend, which was different than the rest of the team. He didn't feel like he had to walk on eggshells around her. _

_A week later, he'd arrived at work and found a thick envelope on his desk. He looked around and saw the bullpen was almost deserted. He opened the envelope and found a first edition of Slaughterhouse Five, signed by Kurt Vonnegut. Tucked inside the front cover the book was a small piece of paper with only a few words written on it. "We all can rise from the ashes of the fires thrown at us. I'm here for you, anytime." _

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><p>Derek stood in the open doorway of his house after Savannah's moving truck pulled away and gently fingered that piece of paper with Emily's handwriting on it.<p>

The tears came of their own accord, he sank to the floor in the entryway of the house, and he moved the book away so his tears wouldn't drip on the pages. Penelope was a good friend, probably the best friend he had right now, but her comfort didn't come with quiet understanding and emotional reserve.

He and Emily had kept most of how close they were outside of work, but the person who he could just cry to without feeling the insecurity about it the next day, the person he could laugh with and talk to without judgement and overt, explicit concern being worn on her sleeve a day later was gone. All he wanted right now, when he felt like the biggest failure in the world, was to be able to pick up the phone and call Emily. And he couldn't.

One year, two months and six days after they'd buried Emily in London, he finally let himself cry about it.


	2. Chapter 2

After a couple of months, Derek realized that being single again agreed with him in a lot of ways. He stopped feeling like a failure and started enjoying his free time. Mostly he enjoyed hanging out with the team again at their usual bar on Friday nights instead of rushing home worried about being so late. And he became more focused at work again without the nagging guilt he had felt for the past several years, every time he got on the jet.

Even though Emily had already been gone from their lives for so long, he felt her absence keenly when he first started going out with the team again, but that feeling slowly faded. He still missed her, he knew he always would, but by the end of the summer, nearly eighteen months after Emily had been killed, that dull ache of missing her while he sat with his friends at the bar started to recede.

It was the end of September, and summer was fading into fall. Derek stood at the bar waiting for the drinks he'd ordered for himself and the team when a glimpse of a face in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar made him gasp. He spun around to look behind him and saw the woman with chin-length auburn hair. She was looking down now, at the screen on her phone, and he could see from this distance that the nose was different. She was also a little heavier, not a lot, but enough that he noticed a bit more roundness in the cheeks. The mannerisms were slightly familiar, though - how her arms and hands moved, how she sat on the bar stool.

He stared and she finally looked up, and he felt like he was looking at a ghost. The face looked different, the nose changed and the lips a little fuller, but there was no mistaking the similarity of those eyes, even from this distance. The woman glanced past him; there was no apparent recognition there. She casually stood up from the stool and walked towards the exit of the bar.

Derek realized how quickly he was breathing and shook his head to clear it. He stepped away from the bar to follow the woman, but she was already through the door before he could get through the crowd. By the time he got outside, she was gone.

He returned to the bar and asked the bartender Jim, "Do you know that woman who was just sitting at that table back there? The one with the auburn hair?"

Jim looked where Derek was pointing and then back at Derek. Jim had been the bartender here for a little over four years at that point and he knew Derek and the team by name, and knew they were FBI agents. He nodded at Derek. "I think you mean Melanie. She's been coming around once or twice a week for the past few months. Always has one glass of wine and then she leaves. She has an accent, said she was from Tennessee when I asked. That's about all I know."

Derek nodded at Jim and started picking up the mugs of beer in front of him. He joined his friends and didn't mention anything, telling himself over and over that he was being ridiculous.

That night on the drive home, he kept going back to the woman at the bar, to those eyes. He'd never seen eyes quite like Emily's, the shape and the lashes were uniquely her. But he had been a fair distance away from the woman in the bar, Melanie. Probably up close, the eyes wouldn't seem so familiar. Still, he couldn't shake the image from his mind, how his heart raced in recognition in that brief second when her eyes made contact with his before sliding past him.

Sleep eluded him. He tossed and turned in restlessness. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply and slowly and fall asleep.

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><p><em>He caught up to Emily in the parking garage at the end of the day, Slaughterhouse Five in his hand. He knew she had a lot of money, family money. He was embarrassed to say he knew that because when she first started with the BAU, Garcia had used her computer skills to check up on this woman who suddenly appeared in their office and on the team. He hadn't spoken a word to Emily at that point, and he felt badly about it now, how he'd eagerly listened to the things Penelope had found out about Emily Prentiss. <em>

_Despite what he knew of her financial status, the book was too much._

"_Emily," he said softly while placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She turned to face him and he held the book towards her. "I once looked for one of these on eBay. This one is in great condition. They sell for thousands of dollars. I can't accept this." _

_She smiled at him. "It's a gift, Derek. I know it may seem extravagant, but I bought that for myself a long time ago and I want you to have it now. Really." _

"_But, Emily," he said in quiet protest. _

_She interrupted him. "I'll tell you what. You buy me dinner tonight and we'll call it even." _

_He stared at her for a second, her brilliant eyes on his. It wasn't the first time he'd noticed her eyes, but it was the first time he realized he could already read her pretty well, when she let him. She was totally serious about the book, and she didn't want him to give it back. He smiled at her. "Dinner it is. What kind of food do you feel like?" _

_She smiled back at him and thought. "I could go for a really good hamburger." _

_He laughed. He couldn't help it. "A book worth thousands for a burger? You're going to have to work on your bargaining skills here, Emily."_

_She laughed with him. "It sounds like a fair trade to me." _

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><p>Derek woke up early on Saturday morning and went for a run. There were things he'd thought about a lot during the night, and he could feel the investigator in him kicking into high gear. He'd experienced this feeling before, where he'd get obsessed with an idea, and his reasoning and judgement could be clouded.<p>

It had crossed through all their minds when they were on the jet on the way to Emily's funeral, that she'd faked a death before in order to ultimately save her life. Penelope had gone through everything with a fine tooth comb, though, and everything checked out, from the signature on the coroner's report to Emily's hospital records the day she'd been shot. There were eye witnesses when she'd been shot, people on the street who were quoted in the paper saying that there was a lot of blood and her heart had already stopped before they got her in the ambulance. Armed with what Clyde Easter told them and the documents they had access to, they'd accepted her death as real and final.

He remembered Reid saying clearly on the plane, "Emily wouldn't do that to us again, make us live through another fake funeral," and Derek had agreed.

Still, the one thought that had pulled him from his sleep several times during the night was the fact that Marcus Simonton, a skilled shooter from what he knew, hadn't taken a true kill shot. It wasn't something he'd thought about before, not even once, because Emily hadn't been their colleague for almost three years at that point, and it wasn't their case at all. It hadn't even happened on the same continent as them. And he'd been trying so hard to shut down the grief that he shut down any thought about the investigation at all.

He knew he was being crazy, and he knew she'd tell him he was being crazy, but in a spontaneous move Derek veered from his normal running path, tacked on the extra three miles, and ran right to Penelope's front door.

She was barely awake when she opened it after he knocked, he could see that. "Derek? Are you okay?" she asked.

He stepped around her and into her apartment, closing the door behind him. "If you were able to fire a gun with dead-on accuracy from a good distance and you wanted someone dead, where would you shoot him?"

Penelope blinked, confused. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Where, Garcia? Where would someone like that shoot?"

"The head, probably," she answered after a beat, still confused.

"Right. So why did Marcus Simonton shoot Emily in the lower chest?"

Her eyes opened wide. "I don't know. Maybe because of the angle, he didn't have a clear shot of her head. Why are you thinking about this now?"

This was the tricky part. He wasn't going to tell Penelope that he'd caught a glimpse of a woman with eyes just like Emily's at the bar the night before, and that he was questioning everything because of it.

"I just...I never really let myself grieve when she died. I shut down about it, but lately I've been thinking about her. Had I been in a different head space at the time, I probably would have asked these questions a lot sooner."

Penelope nodded at him sympathetically and placed a hand on his arm.

"Care to be a super sleuth with me again?" he asked with a hopeful smile.

She looked apprehensive. "Derek, it was a long time ago. What are you thinking you'll find? Emily's dead. Interpol found and killed Marcus Simonton almost a year ago. If she was alive, she would have come out of hiding by now."

He shrugged and pretended it didn't matter that much. "Humor me."

She stared at him for several long seconds before finally nodding. She went to the table and opened her laptop. "What am I looking for?"

He could tell by her voice that she thought this was pointless and ridiculous; she really was just humoring him. And he needed to be careful. He knew she wouldn't tell anyone, but she might stop helping him if she felt him sliding into that obsessed place.

"I want you to look at other hospitals in and around London for women who came in with any sort of chest or upper abdominal injuries around the time Emily was shot."

She glanced warily at him before sighing. She started typing, her confident fingers moving across the keys as windows opened and closed quickly. He still didn't understand how she did what she did, but he didn't have to ask if anyone would find out. If she thought she could get caught, she wouldn't do it.

He went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee while she worked. She spoke just when the coffee started percolating.

"Two," she said. "There were two Caucasian women matching Emily's general age brought into hospitals around the time Emily was shot. A Veronica Reinhard came in with a head injury, a broken arm and chest contusions after being thrown off a horse. And a Samantha Waterford came in with abdominal bruising and a ruptured spleen after a car accident."

Derek stepped forward to look at the screen, his heart thudding in his chest. "Bring up the second woman's records."

He bent to peer more closely, his finger reaching out to touch the screen, right over the sketch of a human body where the doctor indicated the large bruise on the patient with a hastily drawn circle.

"And Samantha Waterford lived?" asked Derek.

"It appears so based on her hospital records," answered Garcia flatly. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking this is exactly the type of injury that might result from someone getting shot while wearing Kevlar."

"Derek," Penelope said softly, "There were eyewitnesses. People commented on the amount of blood and the fact that they had to give her CPR on street because her heart had already stopped. Nobody mentioned a vest."

Derek heard her, but the idea was catching fire in his mind, the idea that maybe Emily wasn't dead. "They probably couldn't get close enough to see, and as far as the blood goes, they do it in simulations all the time at the academy, to make things more realistic. A bag of fake blood that explodes when someone gets shot. Where's Samantha Waterford now?"

With another deep sigh, Penelope started typing again. It didn't take as long that time. "Apparently still residing at the same house she lived in when she was injured."

Derek pulled off his jogging armband and pulled his phone from the sleeve. He dialed the country code and the number displayed on the computer screen. The phone rang five times before it clicked over to a recorded message.

"Hello, this is Samantha," came a voice with a thick British accent.

Derek listened to the rest of the message and when the phone beeped, he said, "Hello, Ms. Waterford. My name is Derek Smith and I'm calling on behalf of St. Anthony's Hospital. My company was hired to audit their financial records going back two years, and I just had a couple of easy questions about the hospital forms you filled out in April of 2015. My company is actually based in the United States. Could you please call me back?"

Derek rattled off his number and disconnected the phone. He shrugged at the stunned look on Penelope's face.

"That was pretty smooth Morgan, but I still don't know what you're doing or why. I think this is a bad idea that is only going to end up hurting you."

He closed his eyes for a second and considered those words before opening them and whispering, "What if she's not dead?"

"What if she's not? I almost think that would hurt worse, that she did that to us again. And what if you find out she's not dead, but you can't ever find her? What if you do find her and she disappears again because she doesn't want to be found?"

_And what if she wanted to disappear, had changed her appearance greatly to do so, but just couldn't stay away and was actually sitting a few feet away from you at the bar last night? _He didn't speak those words out loud, but he thought them. And he hoped.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Do you ever feel like you have to stop being human in order to do this job?" she asked him one evening. _

_They were sitting in a bar near her place. He considered her words. "What do you mean?"_

_She took a sip of her beer. "I mean that most days I feel like I have to shut down on the idea of any real emotion in order to get out of bed every day and come into work. JJ has Will and Henry now and seems to have found a balance, but the rest of us - it seems like we're all floundering in half-lives, like the soul only has so much to give and we pour it all out into our work."_

_He fingered his beer glass and considered that. It was true, yet he couldn't imagine his life any other way. "I hear you and agree with you. JJ's different, that's true, and you're right about the rest of us. But I don't think that means we're not human, we're just more human for other people, the victims we try to help, than we are for ourselves."_

_She stared at him, her hand propped on her chin while her elbow rested on the table. "Sometimes I want to just disappear. I want to take the money I have and walk away from the world and go someplace where no one knows me and I'm just like any other regular person out there." _

_He smiled understandingly at that. "What would you do?" _

_She stared at him for a few seconds before grinning, her eyes clouding over a bit in thought. "I could see myself working in a small bookstore or an antique shop. Somewhere near the ocean. I'd want a simple life, a small cottage somewhere. I'd volunteer for people less fortunate and I'd fall asleep each night thinking I'd helped people in some small way, but differently than I'm helping them now. I'd wear comfortable clothing and comfortable shoes and I'd smile more. There wouldn't be nightmares and I'd sleep soundly every night feeling content and at ease."_

_He never blinked as he watched her face describing that life. And suddenly he could imagine a different life, a quieter, more comfortable place. But when he imagined it, she was by his side. She was a friend unlike any he'd ever had before. He could tell her about the current woman he was dating, or share with her an awful truth and she never faltered in her support of him, and she never brought anything he shared with her into work. He trusted her more than she trusted him, but she trusted him more than she trusted anyone else on the team. She let him in as much as she could. He'd known her for a little over three years at that point, and he couldn't imagine his life without her.  
><em>

"_Why don't you do it?" he finally asked with a friendly smile on his face. _

_She made a small sound, a mumbled hum. "I might, some day. But it's not time yet." _

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><p>Derek's thoughts were interrupted when Penelope placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Can I see you in my office?"<p>

He stood automatically and followed her down the hall and to her lair. His mind was still on that conversation with Emily from years ago, a conversation he understood more fully now. It hadn't been time because she was still worried about Doyle, and Declan. That was the first time she'd told him about the desire to disappear, but it wasn't the last.

Penelope closed her office door when he stepped in. "I went back and forth about snooping more, but ultimately I decided to do it because you made me curious. Did Samantha call you back?"

Derek shook his head. "I tried calling her again yesterday and left another message, but still no response. I might try calling again today."

Penelope nodded and reached to her desk to hand him a manila file folder. "It pisses me off something fierce, but I'm assuming there's a deeper understanding there for you."

He took the folder and raised his eyebrows at her in question.

"Emily spent the eight months before she died liquidating a good portion of her assets. I don't know where the money went and I can't find out. We're talking just under two million dollars slowly tucked away somewhere else, like she'd been planning for this long before Simonton was released from prison," she told him, sadness and disappointment evident in her voice.

Derek glanced at the folder in his hands and then back at Penelope, hope surging through his heart again. He contemplated what he could possibly say to Garcia, hurt so evident on her face. He cleared his throat. "I don't know for sure what this means, but if it means what we think it might, I think Emily meant to stay dead, that the funeral we went to in London was supposed to be final. It wasn't a temporary tease to cover the truth. I think she wanted us all to think she was dead forever, to grieve and move on. She didn't plan on coming back."

Penelope's eyes filled with tears that fell down her face. "If that's true, then maybe you should let her do what she intended to do."

Derek was silent at those words and it felt like hands were gripping his heart so it couldn't pump anymore. He watched Penelope cry, but held back his own tears. "Maybe you're right," he finally whispered, but he heard the lie in his voice before the sentence fully escaped his mouth.

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><p>Derek was thankful there was no case that day that pulled them out of town, thankful that he could drive home that evening and flop into his bed. He was emotionally exhausted, his mind spending hours that day trying to figure out his next move while he tried to complete actual work. He pulled his car in the driveway, turned it off and emerged from the vehicle, bed the only thought on his mind.<p>

He was torn from the thought of sleep when a voice he recognized called out from the darkness. "Come take a walk with me."

He turned, startled, and found Clyde Easter standing near the bushes in his front yard. Derek didn't hesitate, Easter being the person he was next planning to track down on his own, thoughts of flying to London not far off in his mind.

When they got on the sidewalk and started walking in the dark, Clyde said, "She thought you'd let this go, but I expected to have to have this conversation with you one day, though I expected it sooner. You need to stop."

He turned to glance at Easter while the British accent continued in a hushed tone, "Emily Prentiss _is_ dead. She wanted it that way. Every time there's a blip, every time there's an inquiry about that death, you are putting her in potential danger. I'm going to be completely honest with you because it's what's safest for her, and you're going to need to clean up on your end with anyone you've talked to about this."

Derek had once watched a surfing competition on television, and he couldn't understand how people rode such big waves, which is exactly what he felt like he was doing right now with a few simple sentences from Clyde Easter; the huge surge of hope and then the crash of reality.

"Tell me," said Derek softly.

"Samantha Waterfords's hospital records were tapped and I was notified. A few minutes later, you left a voice mail message for her, which I also received. When Marcus Simonton was released from prison, we didn't think much of it, and by we I mean most of Interpol. Except Emily. A week after he was released, she confided in me that she felt like she was being followed. A couple days after that, she found a picture of herself that had been altered to show a bullet hole in her head. On her kitchen table in her flat. It wasn't there when she went to bed the night before, but it was there when she woke up, which means someone, presumably Simonton, got inside her flat while she was sleeping and left it for her."

Easter cleared his throat and Derek felt his heart racing in anger towards Simonton and sadness for Emily. He felt Easter glance at him before he continued, his tone even quieter than before, sadness evident in his own voice, "She came to me a week later and said she was ready to die and I needed to help make it look permanent. She said she couldn't live for another second looking over her shoulder. She said she'd already come up with her own plan, she needed a couple of weeks, and then she just needed me and a couple of other people she knew we could trust in on it."

"But Simonton is dead, now," Derek said, even though he knew that wasn't the point.

"His group isn't. People still connected to Doyle aren't. She was tired of all of it, tired of looking over her shoulder. She wasn't well the last year she was at Interpol. She was depressed and despondent because of it, the whole job and the life she was living. Simonton being released was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. She asked for what she needed, and I could see she wasn't going to change her mind. Rather than risk her going to someone else who could potentially make a mess of things, I gave her what she asked for."

Derek thought about that. It broke his heart, but he understood. Reid would probably share sentiments similar to Penelope's, anger and sadness, while the rest of them might be a bit more understanding. He separated the two events in his mind, her death in 2011 was different; she'd still been unconscious in Bethesda when they buried her, it wasn't her decision to do that to them, it was Hotch's. This was her choice, and she intended to be dead forever; burying her wasn't a farce in her mind. They'd grieve and they'd let go, which is exactly what happened for the rest of the team. Except Derek hadn't done that. He'd only recently let himself grieve the loss of her and then he caught a glimpse of hope in a bar the previous Friday.

"She didn't say goodbye," he said quietly, and then was embarrassed at how desperate his voice sounded.

"She thought about it. She thought about flying out here to see you all one last time, but decided it wasn't the best choice. She'd never done it before, spontaneously, and it would be a huge red flag. She told me you all had already let her go in a lot of ways, and it was better to not stir those emotions up before being gone for good."

Derek shook his head as they rounded the corner and headed back down the block towards his house. He'd never let her go, not really, though he'd made a valiant effort faking it from the moment she got on that plane to London. He thought about telling Clyde about the woman in the bar, but thought better of it. "Where is she?"

"I have no clue, Morgan. The last time I saw Emily up close and in person, she was strapping a fake bag of blood on her vest. When that was done and she pulled a shirt over the whole contraption, she adjusted the shaggy black wig on my head, and pressed on the fake mole on my face that made me look like Simonton. She smiled at me and told me to shoot straight and not fuck it up. She wanted to go."

"The first responders?" he asked.

"Two men who had been deep undercover and understood. They'll never tell, and they played the role perfectly. Everything else with the doctors and coroner and funeral, I took care of. I gave her the original fake identity of Samantha Waterford, which she had on her when I shot her. She took care of the rest of her personal matters. I don't know her identities, I don't know where she is. I fired the rifle and told her goodbye when I saw her fall to the ground. Visiting her in the hospital would have blown everything. The last time I saw her, she was laying on the sidewalk outside her flat in London."

Derek was silent and fighting back tears. He didn't know where she was, but he thought maybe he knew what she looked like now. She'd told him almost a decade ago what she wanted to do, what she dreamed of, which was disappearing and leaving it all behind, starting over completely free. He didn't understand the full scope of that sentiment at the time, but she'd told him the truth back then. And she'd repeated a similar sentiment to him after she'd come back from Paris, after Doyle was dead.

And, yet, when he thought of Melanie in that bar, if that really was Emily, maybe it was harder for her than she imagined, the complete letting go of herself. He knew in that moment that if that was her, she hadn't come back for the team. She wouldn't do that to them, make them live with the emotions of a fake death again. If that was her, she was in that bar for one reason, and it was him. The one person who could handle this and might understand.

"I'll stop looking," he finally said as they approached his driveway.

Easter nodded. "Good. It's best. We have to respect what she wanted. She gave enough and she deserves to live now."

Derek nodded. He watched Easter get into a vehicle across the street from his home and drive away.

The next morning he prepared himself for the lies he was about to tell and stopped by Penelope's office, closing the door behind him. "Samantha Waterford called me back. She really was in a car accident. There were kids screaming in the background. She's not Emily. And I talked to Clyde Easter this morning," he told her while shaking his head sadly. "He told me Emily had been planning to leave Interpol and essentially disappear, traveling for as long as she could. She was badly burned out. He didn't know about the money, but he wasn't too surprised by it. I guess it makes sense. He told me about holding her hand while she was dead in a hospital bed. He was sincere and I believe him. He told me to call the coroner if I had any doubts, so I did. And his story checks out, too. She's dead, Pen."

He said it out loud, and even though it was a lie, the tears he blinked back in his eyes were genuine, because he was lying to one of his best friends for the other. Penelope hugged him and nodded against his chest. She didn't say anything, but she didn't cry either. She'd already mourned for Emily and it wasn't hard for her to go back to that place where she'd let Emily go.

He covered his tracks like Clyde told him to. He'd stop searching. But he knew Emily was alive, and he held out hope that she'd come find him.

The next night he started his vigils at the bar on many nights when the BAU was home, slowly swirling beer in a mug, beer that he rarely drank. He thought about that moment when her eyes slipped past his in the bar, impressed but not surprised by how completely she'd accepted her new role. Jim said she'd been coming in there for a few months, and he could imagine what she'd done before that. She'd had plastic surgery somewhere, and then she probably really had been in Tennessee learning every inflection of the accent and developing a life for herself with her new identity. And then, when she was completely Melanie and felt she could remain undercover, she'd come home. That was what he imagined _if _Melanie was really Emily.

He waiting through October and well into November. Her eyes had slid past his the first time he saw her, but his had registered recognition, and it probably had spooked her. Or her absence from the bar was a strong message to him that he couldn't act like he knew her when the team was around, or perhaps that he couldn't act like he knew her at all, even around her, that he had to accept she was Melanie.

Or he was just completely fucking delusional and Emily was alive but never coming back, and Melanie was just Melanie, some woman with eyes similar to Emily's.

On the third Tuesday in November, Melanie walked back in the bar's doors. He discreetly watched her as she settled into a seat at one of the tables. He watched her and he saw her eyes lift, once, twice, sweeping through the bar. And he realized he'd been right the first time - the eyes were a spot-on match. On her third sweep of the bar, her eyes found his and stayed for a brief second.

Emily Prentiss might be dead, but Melanie wasn't. The features were different enough that there was massive room for doubt, but Derek nervously stood from his seat at the bar anyway. He walked towards her table and she didn't betray any emotion, not fear or joy, as he approached. But she watched him with those eyes.

"Up for some company?" he asked her.

Her head tilted to the side, contemplating him, before she gave a small nod.

Up close, the changes in her facial features were more slight, not as drastic as they'd appeared from a distance. He thought with eighty percent certainty that it was her. But she didn't want to be Emily anymore and he wouldn't make her. He held out his hand to shake hers and smiled. "My name is Derek," he said when she took his hand.

A brief flash of emotion crossed her face and then it was gone. She smiled at him and in a lilting southern accent said, "Melanie. Nice to meet you."


	4. Chapter 4

"_Running London Interpol is a far cry away from a cottage on a beach somewhere where no one knows you," said Derek quietly. _

_She laughed lightly. He couldn't see her face because they were sitting back to back, resting against each other. It was late, the middle of the night, and he stared to his side, at the light from the Washington Monument glittering in the reflecting pool. _

"_It is. But it just feels like the right move for some reason. At least for now." _

"_Is this you disappearing?" he asked. _

"_No," she breathed back. "Maybe. Kind of. Maybe it will work and I'll find it satisfying and stay there. Or maybe I won't. I don't know." _

"_Do you really think we'll keep in touch?" _

"_We can talk whenever, it will just be over the phone."_

_He sighed. He was hoping for more of a promise than that. He was quiet for a long time. Finally he whispered, "We barely got you back."_

_Her response was a truth he couldn't deny. "Time-wise and emotionally."_

_They lapsed into silence again. He felt her stir and heard her inhale. "I should go get some sleep. My flight leaves in eight hours."_

_He reached back behind him and found her hand. She held on and didn't make a move to stand. She was leaving and he couldn't really sort through all of his emotions. _

_After a few minutes, she squeezed his hand and he felt her pull away to stand up. He sighed again and stood as well, turning to face her. She looked at his face and gave him a gentle smile. "I'll see you in a few weeks when you and Penelope come to visit." _

_She was beautiful and he loved her, but he'd never let those two thoughts into his mind at the same time before. He'd acknowledged her appearance in his mind before, and he'd acknowledged he loved her, but the two thoughts together were something he'd kept in check. She was, by all accounts, his best friend. Sometimes she felt like a sister, and sometimes she felt like a platonic lover. But he'd never truly considered taking a romantic risk and potentially losing her friendship. _

_He reached out and touched her face before bending forward and kissing her cheek. It was platonic, and yet it felt intimate. He straightened his posture again and looked in her eyes; in the bright moonlight, he saw love and sadness in them._

_She smiled at him again before reaching out to give him a hug, her lips a ghost on his cheek for one brief moment, too. "I love you, Derek Morgan. You are the best friend I've ever had," she whispered in his ear. _

"_Then stay," he whispered back. The words slipped past his lips before he could think about them. _

_She squeezed him tighter and he felt the tears in her voice before he felt them on his cheek. "I can't," she said as she let him go. _

_A few weeks later, he went to London and it was different. It wasn't because of her; he was different. He'd gone to that place he'd been before, where he shut down and didn't let himself feel so he didn't experience the sadness caused by her absence. It was difficult to remove all of those walls when he saw her again. She felt it, he could sense that, but she seemed more understanding than hurt by it. _

_The first few months she was gone, when the BAU had a case, he'd turn his head on the jet when they were pondering victimology or the unsub, wishing she would appear to give her input. And after a hard case, sometimes he'd dream on the flight home that she actually was there, giving him a warm smile or a friendly squeeze on the shoulder._

_Over time, weekly phone calls dwindled into a couple times a month, eventually fading nearly all together. Sometimes they'd exchange emails. She came out to visit the next summer for a few days; he participated in the group gatherings, but she didn't ask to spend time alone with him, and he didn't offer, not wanting the sharp pain of missing her to resurface. _

_He still thought about her almost every day, but banished the thoughts as quickly as they came so he didn't get sad. Their friendship faded over time, and he met Savannah. _

_Emily didn't extend her time there after she came to help find JJ, giving them all only a few hours of herself. He saw something there, a brief message in her eyes, when they were all at the bar together, but he couldn't read it because it was different than any look she'd given him before. _

* * *

><p><em>Pure relief, <em>he registered in his mind. That's what he'd seen in her eyes in that bar back in February 2014. Relief that it appeared he had moved on without her in his life? He couldn't be certain, but he thought so.

He recognized it as relief because it was the same message he could see in Melanie's eyes in that bar, that he was willing to accept her new identity. The relief rolled off Melanie's body as they talked like they'd never met before.

She asked about his job and his family, and it seemed perfect, even in its redundancy, because he was talking to her again. Melanie never broke character. Her accent was spot on and never wavered, and she never gave any indication that she was listening to stories she already knew.

He watched her face and took in the differences. It wasn't so much that the changes weren't as significant up close, it was that he recognized subtle, familiar things that were all Emily while sitting a foot away from her that he couldn't see from a distance. She'd changed a lot about her mannerisms, but there were some things still there - the slight arch of her raised eyebrow that had been dyed to match her hair, the way her skin moved on the side of her mouth when she gave him a closed-lip smile, her ear and the way she pushed her shorter, auburn hair behind it.

She could have passed him in the street on a casual walk and he wouldn't have glanced twice unless his eyes met hers. She'd sat in this bar probably on several occasions being right near the team and, until the end of September, no one had even noticed her. Had she kept her eyes totally averted, he wouldn't have ever noticed her. She was more relaxed overall, the stiff hold of her shoulders all but gone, but she was also apprehensive about sitting there with him. He could feel some of her indecisiveness under the relief.

She had long nails, he couldn't be sure if they were fake or real, and they changed the appearance of her hands slightly, but not enough. He knew those hands. The longer he talked and watched her, any lingering doubts that she might not be Emily disappeared.

She caught him looking too intently at her hands while he told her about his mom and sisters, and quickly excused herself to use the restroom. He watched her walk to the back of the bar and silently chastised himself. He'd need to be more careful.

His mind wandered while she was away from the table. London really was her disappearing, the first step. It probably hadn't started out that way, but it morphed into that. Maybe she wanted to give them all the time to let her go so it wouldn't be so devastating when she was gone for good. A few months after she'd come to DC for JJ, after they'd given her easy and far-less emotional goodbyes when she left again, she started liquidating assets and burying her money elsewhere.

Clyde thought her depressed and despondent that year, but Derek guessed that had he seen her, that's not what he would have read in her emotions: Remote and pulling away was probably more accurate. She could have never pulled off a disappearing act in DC with all of them around, with him around. He'd like to think he could have done for her what Clyde had done, pulled the trigger and walked away, but deep down he knew he would have never been able to do that.

_This was what she wanted_ he reminded himself as he watched Melanie walk back towards the table. She gave him a small, closed-mouth smile.

"I should get going," she said, a little flustered. "I have an early day at work tomorrow."

He smiled at her and pretended she was just some woman he'd met in a bar. "I've told you all about myself, but I don't know anything about you."

She considered him for a minute. "This isn't my favorite bar, but there's a quieter wine bar I like going to. We could meet there on Saturday if you'd like, and I can tell you more about myself."

Derek nodded, relieved and hopeful, feeling like he'd passed some sort of test. He guessed she wanted to get out of the BAU's stomping grounds now that they'd connected, but she still wanted to see him. He gave her his phone number and she said she'd text him about a time and the address.

She started walking away and he called out, "Hey, Melanie."

She turned and he grinned. "It was really nice meeting you."

She hadn't given him a full smile in the forty-five minutes or so they'd sat there together, but she did then; a nod, a "You, too," and her true smile. The nose was different, the lips were slightly different, but the eyes combined with her smile was familiar enough to take his breath away. And she was still beautiful, and somehow still uniquely her despite the changes. Underneath the hair dye, the plastic surgery and the accent, he knew the Emily he loved was still in there.

She had a free ride, she could have never come back to the area, never come back to that bar, and he would have never thought she was out there. But she hadn't done that. Whatever trust he felt she held in reserve in the past, it wasn't there anymore. She was trusting him with the biggest secret of all. She'd come to find him, unable to totally let him go, either.

That night he went home and straight to the desk in his office, unlocking the drawer that contained the file folder with Emily's financial records. He flipped it open and really looked for the first time. She'd been slow and careful about selling stocks, moving money out of different accounts, a little here and there for a little over eight months.

He didn't know how she was initially planning to disappear, but she hadn't finished moving all her money around. Marcus Simonton showed up and made her come up with a Plan B.

He sighed, but then smiled a little. He'd see her Saturday, if she texted him. He believed she would. He went to the fireplace and lit the folder and its contents on fire, waiting and watching the whole thing burn before going upstairs to bed.

He knew she knew he recognized her, but she'd panicked when she caught him staring at her hands, and then she'd left. He thought maybe it was because she realized in that moment that any member of the team would recognize her if they spent a few minutes alone with her. She'd changed enough that anyone after her who didn't believe she was dead would have an impossible time finding her, and would never recognize her. But she hadn't changed enough so he couldn't recognize her, and he was grateful.

He brushed his teeth and climbed into bed, reaching over to his nightstand where _Slaughterhouse Five_ had stayed since the day Savannah moved out. He removed the note from inside the book and gently ran his fingers over the loops and curves of her handwriting. _We can rise from the ashes of the fires thrown at us. _

* * *

><p>"I grew up in in the middle of nowhere. The closest major city was Knoxville. My grandparents lived with us. My grandmother had been a school teacher, and she homeschooled me," Melanie told him that Saturday night. "It was pretty lonely. I had no siblings and there was no one who lived near us. I ended up going to a community college, and then I transferred to the University of Tennessee."<p>

Derek listened intently as she told him her cover story, which was intricate and simple at the same time. She could have paid a few thousand dollars a pop for several different passports and lived a transient life, but she hadn't. She probably paid a couple hundred thousand dollars for a real identity and background, and had probably started that ball rolling a few months before she started liquidating assets, possibly right after she'd come out to see them that February. He'd be willing to bet that if he asked Garcia to look into a Melanie Fielding from Tennessee, she'd find college transcripts, tax records and a credit history.

"What did you major in?" asked Derek, enthralled by how completely she'd enveloped the persona of a fictitious person.

She took a sip of her wine. "I have my undergraduate degree in Psychology and a graduate degree in Business Psychology. I work for myself, and have for years. I'm contracted to come in when major corporations are going through a reorganization or lay offs. But not for long," she said with a small grin while opening her eyes a bit at him.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I'm pretty burned out with all of that. I'm ready for something a little more quaint and simple. Back in August, I purchased a small bed and breakfast on the coast. It's pretty run down, so I'm having it renovated this winter. My contract in Virginia is over in March, and I'm hoping to reopen the bed and breakfast in the late spring."

Derek smiled at her even though she was essentially telling him she wouldn't be around for long. She took the time she needed to establish her identity, but she was doing it, getting her place near the ocean and a simpler life. She didn't tell him which coast or where. He could find out, but he wouldn't snoop; he'd already received the best gift he'd ever been given, just by her coming back to him. Maybe she would tell him eventually.

"It sounds like a great life you're planning for yourself, Melanie," he said.

She nodded and gave him one of her megawatt smiles. "I am really looking forward to it."

He chose his words carefully. "And I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little better while you're still around."

She grinned at him and nodded. "That would be nice. I'm assuming you're going to Chicago next week for Thanksgiving so meeting up next Saturday is out."

The sentence was delivered in her accent, but he caught her mistake. Emily would know that he went to Chicago every Thanksgiving he could; Melanie wouldn't. But he looked in her eyes and she didn't seem to feel like it was a mistake. Away from the bar, in an establishment in a different town not near the residence of anyone in the BAU, she held his gaze and gave him back the first piece of her true self.

"I am. But I fly back early on Sunday. Provided there isn't a case at work, I could meet you Sunday evening."

"Perfect," she quietly replied.

When they walked out of the bar that night she stopped near a car he assumed was hers and he turned to face her. Her hand reached out and touched his arm. She didn't entirely break out of her new identity, but he could see she was struggling not to, in that dark and nearly deserted parking lot. "Thank you, Derek. I've missed having someone like you in my life for a very long time."

He found himself struggling to hold back tears, and tried to keep his voice casual. "Me, too. I'll see you next Sunday, Melanie."


	5. Chapter 5

_When she first came back from Paris, he got a different Emily for awhile. She was more affectionate when they were alone, so happy that he wasn't mad at her. She hugged him more and smiled at him more, but gradually she started pulling back and retreating into herself again. _

"_Why?" he asked her. _

_She tucked her feet under her on the couch and stared at him. "I was alone in Paris for a long time and I missed you all and hated that you, especially, thought I was dead. And I was so lonely. It was disappearing, but it wasn't done in a way where I had options to reach out to people or make friends. It wasn't what I planned. I was completely alone. So when I came back, I was so happy to have the team back, and have our friendship back that I was more open, but now…"_

"_Now what?" _

"_Things just don't feel right for me, Derek, and I'm not sure why. I'm trying to figure it out." _

_Over the next few months, she told him about the nightmares she was still having, and how going into work sometimes made her nervous and uncomfortable. He tried to help her figure out why, and one night over take-out food, she finally said, "I don't do vulnerability well, and that's how I feel at work. Emotionally vulnerable because of what you all now know, about the fact that I feel like Hotch is watching me everyday, waiting for me to crack. Rossi, too. And Reid still looks at me like I'm a ghost sometimes. It's just awkward and unsettling all the time." _

_After that conversation, he sometimes went over to her apartment worried that she would just be gone, so it completely came as a shock to him when she told him she was considering buying a place in DC. He was happy because it sounded like she was planning to stay put. _

_But that was a short-lived happiness. He looked in her eyes at JJ and Will's wedding and could see she was already gone in her mind. She was two feet away from him, and he missed her already, and he told her that. _

* * *

><p>Derek sat at the kitchen counter on Thanksgiving morning, drinking coffee and watching his mom prepare food for the huge crowd of extended family coming over for dinner that afternoon. He'd offered to help but she'd shushed him and told him to relax.<p>

The quiet lasted about ten minutes; he looked down in his coffee mug while Fran Morgan stared at him. Then the questions started like he knew they would. They got through the "How's work?" "How's the team?" "Do you have any renovation projects going on?" And then his mom got to the point.

"How are you doing without Savannah?" she asked.

It was a simple question with a simple answer, but a reality dawned on him before he replied. "I'm doing well. I'm more relaxed now. I'm actually happier." He smiled at his mom and said, "Excuse me for a minute. I left my phone upstairs."

He walked slowly from the kitchen, his mind on Emily and his mom's question. Savannah had moved out towards the end of June after they'd lived together for a year and a half. He'd woken up alone in the house thinking about her for less than a week.

Emily had moved to London and had been out of his life for over four years, and even though he tried to expel thoughts of her from his head as soon as they came, he had thought about her almost every day.

He sat on the edge of his bed, sad and reflective, thinking about how Emily, now Melanie, was totally alone in this new world she'd made for herself. At least for now, until she settled in at that bed and breakfast and started making friends. She was alone, except for him, and he was in Chicago.

Derek reached for his phone and saw there was already a text from her. _Happy Thanksgiving, Derek. Looking forward to seeing you Sunday._

He smiled and set his phone down, pulling his laptop towards him instead. A few minutes of searching yielded a single seat on a flight back to DC, leaving the next morning at ten o'clock. He booked it and picked up his phone, opting to call instead of text.

"Derek?" she answered. He smiled, already used to and kind of liking how his name sounded with her accent.

"Happy Thanksgiving. What would you think about meeting me at my place tomorrow afternoon for some of my mom's Thanksgiving leftovers?"

There was silence on the phone for a few seconds. "I thought your flight wasn't until Sunday."

"I just changed that."

She huffed out a laugh. "How about my place? Nobody you know will drop in here."

His heart sank a bit at those words and what they really meant. She could never chance coming to his house.

"Your place would be great. Around two tomorrow?"

"Sure. I'll text you the address," she said softly, and he heard a hitch in her voice.

"Are you okay? I don't have to come over."

She sighed. "No, I want you to. Really. It's just...I need you to remember that I'm leaving at the end of March, Derek."

His free hand went over his heart on its own, like he needed to hold it in place. "I know," he whispered. "I won't ask you to stay."

* * *

><p>The next morning he came downstairs a little after six o'clock and found his mom already in the kitchen.<p>

"I thought you'd sleep in today after such a busy day yesterday," he said with a smile.

She grinned back. "Up at six, just like always. What are you doing up?"

"There's a case. I have to get on a ten o'clock flight back to DC. I'm sorry. But I'll come back out for a weekend soon, okay?"

His mom stared at him for a long time before nodding.

He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. "I love you. Can I take some leftovers home?"

"Of course, Derek. Let me get you some plastic containers and a soft ice chest from the garage."

She watched him long and hard while he packed up some leftovers in the containers she provided.

"Who is she?" Fran finally asked.

Derek stopped mid-scoop, leaving the spoon in the mashed potatoes and looking at his mom. "Just a very good friend."

"I doubt there's a case, which means you're flying home for her. That's more than a very good friend."

Derek nodded. "It's complicated."

Fran shook her head. "Maybe you should try to find someone who's a good fit for you that isn't complicated for once. What's her name?"

Derek thought about that before smiling slightly. "Melanie. She's worth the complications."

* * *

><p>They ate his mom's leftovers in the furnished row house in Baltimore that Melanie was renting while the homeowner was in Europe for work for a year. Baltimore, a place she wouldn't have to be worried about chance run-ins with people she knew at the grocery store or anywhere else. Her commute had to be a bitch, and it meant she'd been driving ninety minutes a couple times a week to show up at that bar in Quantico.<p>

She lit candles and they grinned at each other a lot. She told him more about her job, which sounded awful, advising and then walking a company through a reorganization, and ultimately laying off people a lot of the time.

"It_ is_ pretty awful, but it's temporary."

He told her about Savannah, and how that ultimately ended.

They sat on her couch and talked nonsense and movies, and he couldn't understand why she was still pretending to be Melanie, acting like she didn't know him well at all. He didn't push her, and there was a sense there that how she was behaving was more for his benefit than hers.

But when he left that night, she gave him a hug and thanked him for the food and for coming back early. Her arms around him felt so familiar that he wanted to melt into them and never let her go.

He started making the drive to Baltimore once or twice a week and they'd have dinner out or go to the movies. She started calling him more often and would tell him to turn on his TV. They watched light-hearted comedy shows together, laughing over the phone.

A few days before Christmas, when they were out for dinner, she told him she needed to fly out and check on the bed and breakfast, but she still didn't tell him where that was. She said she'd be back on December 30th. "What are you doing for New Year's Eve?" she asked.

He smiled at her. "Whatever you're doing."

She laughed. "Come over to my place around seven? We'll feast on lobster."

_Lobster. Emily's New Year's Eve tradition that she told him about the first year she'd been with the team. _

He looked in her eyes. It wasn't that he ever forgot she was Emily, it was just that he was was fully accepting her as Melanie now. Sometimes it was confusing, especially when she said something like she just did, where he was drawn back to the past with this woman who looked and spoke differently now.

Since she was gone, he decided to get on a flight to Chicago for a couple of days and spend Christmas with his mom, since he'd cut Thanksgiving short.

"How's your complication?" Fran asked him on Christmas morning with a small smile and a wink.

She was going for easy humor, but the truth was, things were getting more complicated and he couldn't explain it to her. He'd loved Emily for a long time, and he was falling in love with her as Melanie, and he only had three months left before she moved on. "It's still complicated," he said quietly.

* * *

><p>He showed up on New Year's Eve with champagne. He hadn't seen her in eight days, which wasn't long at all, but it felt like it had been forever. She seemed to think so, too, because she hugged him firmly when he walked in the door.<p>

He leaned against her counter and watched her open the champagne. The house was warm, and the smell coming from the oven was delicious. And he knew what it was, another of Emily's New Year's Eve traditions. "Your baked macaroni and cheese?" he asked.

Her eyes landed on his as she handed him a glass of champagne and she nodded, acknowledging the Emily still inside her.

He kept it easy, smiling at her. "I love that stuff. I can't wait."

She grinned and relaxed.

They ate that night, and she told him about some of the details of the bed and breakfast. "There are five bedrooms that can be rented out in the main house. And there's a cottage to the side, it's small, but it's ten steps from the door to the sand and it's where I'll be living. I have no idea about running a bed and breakfast, but I can figure it out, just like I figured out this job."

"A cottage right on the water," he said softly.

He watched her quietly recall that conversation from so long ago and saw her blink back tears. The moment was interrupted when the fire alarm in the kitchen went off. "Shit," she said. "I forgot about the dessert."

Derek followed her into the smoky kitchen and opened the window, letting in the cold air. He removed the burned pie from the oven and turned it off. He turned around and she was on her toes, reaching high with her arms, waving a magazine at the fire alarm to clear the smoke and make the noise stop.

Her shirt had ridden up and he saw the edge of the silvery scar on her abdomen, the scar from Doyle. He moved forward without thinking, not even quite sure what his plan was. But the noise of the alarm stopped and he was right in front of her. She raised her eyebrows and he reached his hand under her shirt that had now settled back into place, running his fingers over the raised ridges of that scar.

Her breath hitched and the tears were back in her eyes. She touched his cheek and whispered, "Derek." And there was no accent. At least in that moment, she was being Emily. Her true voice found his ears and his heart soared. "I wanted to let you let me go, but I couldn't. I couldn't let you think I was dead. Not again. And I missed you so much. I missed you before I did this, but I missed you more after. I'm being selfish, though, putting you through this."

"It's not selfish. I can handle it. I love you."

"I love you, too," she sighed.

He moved his hand from her stomach to her back and traced the fingers of his other hand down the side of her face. "Tell me?" he asked.

She nodded and took his hand in hers, walking with him out of the kitchen and into the living room, to the couch. They settled facing each other and she kept her hand in his and talked like Emily.

"The last time I came out here I was relieved to see how completely you seemed to have moved on with your life, and I thought my disappearing wouldn't hurt you. I'd been out of your life for so long by that point. But this wasn't how I planned to disappear. I went back to London and started preparing to leave. I went to a man I knew, a man who could get you anything you wanted, and who hated Ian Doyle. He was happy to help me, for the right price. Melanie Fielding was just supposed to be a name, a woman with family money that was going to buy a house somewhere where no one knew her and start over with a simpler life. I never planned to entirely give myself up. I could still be Emily if I wanted or needed to be. I imagined calling you one day and telling you I'd done it and I was happy."

He squeezed her fingers and smiled understandingly. "And then Marcus Simonton was released and started putting you through the same shit Doyle did, and you realized you'd always be looking over your shoulder. The idea wrecked you, you came to the conclusion that you needed to die, and you came up with a Plan B. You didn't give yourself the time to analyze the full impact of your choice, because you didn't have the time."

Her eyes looked down and then back up at him. He told her about Clyde Easter coming to see him.

She sighed when he finished. "I went back to the man and told him I needed him to go deep into Melanie Fielding's background and history and create a life for me. Emily Prentiss needed to be entirely gone and I needed to really be able to become someone else in order to feel totally free. I asked him to make it fast, and I needed to be a US resident. I think I already knew in that moment that I needed to be able to come find you, even if I was doing this. I paid him a lot of money to do a rush job. He picked Tennessee; I didn't ask why. There was no time to be picky. He set me up with the plastic surgeon once I was released from the hospital in London. He told me my background and my current career. He provided me with references and numbers for prospective clients to call. I gave him two-hundred-fifty thousand dollars and he gave me Melanie Fielding, with a solid background and searchable history."

She turned her body on the couch and leaned against him. He placed his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.

"I decided the safest thing for me was to accept who I was fully. I couldn't rely on a counterfeiter and criminal for my references forever. So I started establishing my own, genuine work history. Once I felt settled as Melanie, I started thinking about you more. I thought about the whole team, but mostly you. I knew I couldn't let them know I was alive, because it would be devastating and unfair, and ultimately unsafe for me in the long run. The more people who know your secrets, the more likely it is that that they cease to be secrets. But I knew I could trust you completely, and I couldn't shake the thought from my head. My third contract in Tennessee ended and I found the job in Virginia. And you know the rest of the story, more or less."

"How come you disappeared for so long after I recognized you in that bar?" he asked.

"Once I got back to the area, I struggled with the idea for a long time, hanging out in the bar but not letting you really see me. And then I decided to let you see me, and I told myself if you recognized me, you were meant to. And if you didn't, I would just finish up this job and move on. But then you did recognize me, I saw that in an instant, and I got scared. Then you started hanging out at the bar all the time; I saw you through the window but I couldn't make myself go in. I knew you were waiting for me, though, and you didn't give up. I convinced myself that you would be okay with me coming back from the dead again, even like this."

"I am okay and you are beautiful just as you are. I'm not mad, and I understand. I'm actually happy for you that you're just a few months away from getting exactly what you wanted, free and clear, even though I hate that you had to go through all of that."

She pulled away from him and looked at his face. The accent came back, "I can't go back and forth between Emily and Melanie. I'm glad I told you the truth, but I have to be Melanie Fielding or it will be more confusing and depressing than ultimately freeing. I'm Melanie, and I own a bed and breakfast. I'm on my last contract job and I'll be moving in a few months."

He reached forward and placed his hand on her neck, resting his thumb on her cheek. "I can love Melanie Fielding, too."

She whispered, "To what end?"

It was a question with no good answer. He could go with her when she left. He would, but he didn't know how that could work exactly. And she might not want him to; she hadn't even told him where she'd be moving.

"I know you're going, Melanie. I'll let you go, but we could have a good three months first."

Her eyes swirled with emotions and unspoken words. Then she gave him the smallest of nods. He smiled and leaned forward. His lips brushed against hers and her hand went to the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

Derek didn't know whether he wanted to laugh with joy, or cry in despair. Because he knew in that moment, he was making things even more complicated, for himself and for her. But he could hold her in a cocoon for the next three months, love her and make her know she wasn't alone, and never had to feel like that again. He kept his lips against hers and tried not to think about her leaving.


	6. Chapter 6

_She asked him to let her go, and he knew he could never do that. _

"_Where's my medic?" he screamed. _

_Her fingers were now feebly squeezing his, like she was barely hanging on. It felt like an eternity, but it was only seconds later when the medics appeared. One of them cut around her shirt quickly. Derek moved out of the way a bit and let them work, but he kept his right hand in hers and he fought back tears. _

_His left hand reached out and touched the skin on her chest. He registered the wood still sticking out of her, and the angry burn on her chest. He registered how his hand felt against her skin, and how she was so soft. Soft and cold, and though he could feel her chest rising and falling and knew the coldness was from shock, it felt like she was already gone, like there was no warmth left coming from her body. _

_She was unconscious at that point, and he knew she wouldn't hear him, but he took his hand away from her chest for a moment, and placed his left hand over his microphone. _

"_I love you," he whispered in her ear. _

_His left hand went back over her chest and JJ was next to him a moment after that. The medics took Emily away, and he allowed himself the comfort of JJ's arms for a second before standing on shaking legs and asking her to drive him, to take him to Emily. _

_It was almost two hours later when JJ came into the waiting room at the hospital and said Emily was dead, that she never made it off the table. In that moment, it felt like every shred of humanity was ripped from his soul. He looked at the hand that had been against Emily's chest and tried to remember what her skin felt like under him. _

_Too late, he thought. He was too late to save her. _

_In that moment, looking at his hand, every ounce of love he felt for her turned into an all-encompassing hate and obsession for Ian Doyle. He would find him, and he would kill him, and maybe, with time, the memory of her cold and soft skin would stop stinging his hand. _

* * *

><p>It didn't, not at all. Ian Doyle was dead, but he hadn't killed him. He thought about it back then, trying to revive that man on the tarmac, just so he could stare him down and pull the trigger himself. But he didn't do it, and his left hand still stung.<p>

Emily came back and she was more open in the beginning. He wouldn't risk her friendship, unless she said something first, anything at all that told him it might be okay to talk to her about how he felt about her, but then she shut down again. She left for London and he still stared at that hand on occasion, opening and closing it when it felt like a phantom limb while he tried to push Emily Prentiss from his mind.

He met Savannah; she helped, and he loved her, but it wasn't the same type of love, and he knew it. Emily could have walked back in his door and asked him to leave the BAU and be with her, and he would have done it without a second thought. But he held onto his job like a vice grip when Savannah complained about it. And sometimes that left hand would close on its own, ball into a fist, and not touch her, like his heart and subconscious knew it wasn't quite right.

But that first night with Emily, an hour before the ball dropped and a new year began, when the cold air from the open window in the kitchen that they never bothered to close drifted through the house, when they were naked in her bed and the smell of good food and burned pie lingered in the air, his left hand opened wide and gently over the skin of her torso. It traced the the scar on her abdomen first and then ran over the scar from the branding, before gently running across her and making a feather-light path on the scar from her emergency splenectomy.

It traced healing love over the scars directly and indirectly caused by a man named Ian Doyle. He understood completely, looking at how her perfect skin was stretched and pulled and scarred, why she just wanted it all to stop, and wanted to give herself an opportunity for happiness without looking over her shoulder.

He watched his hand and she watched his eyes, and his hand stopped stinging and felt like it was finally in the right place after over five excruciating years of love and loss he tried desperately not to acknowledge.

"I love you, too," Melanie whispered with her accent.

His eyes stopped staring at his hand on her body and looked at her. His eyebrows lifted.

She blinked back tears and smiled softly. "You just told me you loved me about twenty times."

He hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud as his hand traced over her skin.

"I hurt you. I keep leaving and hurting you," she said softly.

He shook his head and moved to lay his naked body fully over hers, sighing at the contact.

"I shouldn't be doing this to you again," she continued. "I don't want to hurt you."

He kissed her then, and smiled at her. "I know everything now and I'm in. I can handle this."

She touched his face and her legs moved to hold him more closely against her. "I came back because I was lonely and I missed you and I knew you probably would understand. But I want you to know that I'm not doing _this_ because I'm lonely."

He kissed her gently. "Why are you?"

"Because I love you, and I finally have the freedom to know that no one can or will ever hurt you because of me, because of Emily."

He clenched his jaw so the tears wouldn't come. He didn't want to cry in that moment. But an odd reality came to him, that the final layers of the mystery that was Emily Prentiss were being stripped away only because she could be someone else now.

The liquid heat of her was like nothing he'd ever experienced. And he didn't know his heart could beat so fast and still keep him going. He tried to stay focused, to memorize every moan and sigh, to watch her face and kiss her lips. Her hands traced his back and sides and she urged him on with gentle gasps and whispered, "yeses."

When they were both nearing the end, he knew he should say Melanie, he promised himself he would say it the next time, but that time he gasped, "Emily," and her eyes found his. If there was ever a doubt in him that she didn't feel the exact same way about him that he felt about her, it was gone in that moment. Her eyes, the one feature on her he knew completely and could read when she let him and never changed despite all her other changes, showed him nothing but love.

He felt her nails against his back as her hands pressed into him more firmly, he felt her body tightening around him and she still kept her eyes open and on him. He saw her in his mind then, for a brief moment, her silky dark hair and her face the way he remembered it.

* * *

><p>She gently rested in his arms with her head on his chest and his fingers skipped lightly over her warm and very alive skin. "Why didn't you have the scars removed when you had your plastic surgery?" he asked gently.<p>

"I was so afraid of looking at myself in the mirror and not knowing myself. I wanted proof of who I was, even if I couldn't be her anymore."

He ran his hands through her hair and whispered, "I'm glad."

She raised her head to find his eyes. "Why?"

"So we'll both always know who you are. I understand why you have to keep up the accent and mannerisms, I understand how hard it would be to go back and forth. I can love Melanie, but you're still Emily there inside you and I won't let you get lost."

She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but then her lips closed and she pressed a kiss on his chest before squeezing her arm around him tightly and resting her head against him again.

The next morning when he awoke, with his arms around her and her gentle breathing next to him, he realized he slept more contently than he had since he had just turned ten years old, the night before his dad died. It had been so many decades that he didn't even know that level of pure rest was even possible.

Melanie rolled over and smiled at him. "Do you have anything you have to do today?" she asked.

He smiled and shook his head.

"Good," she said right before her lips touched his and she pulled his body closer to hers.

* * *

><p>Three weeks later, he didn't know which end of him was up. He did his job well, he traveled with the team and was focused on their cases. He went out with them on Friday nights so as not to alert them to anything different. He gave one other evening a week to Penelope and whoever else was joining in when she initiated something, just so he didn't raise red flags. But he never stayed too late, and any night he wasn't traveling for work, he was in Baltimore.<p>

Melanie, at first, expressed some reservations at that arrangement. "How is this going to work when I leave? I can't stay here, Derek."

His answers were always vague and loving, delivered with a kiss or a hug. "We'll figure it out."

He had no idea how, though. And she eventually stopped questioning how it was going to work and just started enjoying the time they had.

His home became a collection bin for mail and a place for him to stop by to exchange clothes on his way between Quantico and Baltimore, and even the minutes he was there felt like wasted time.

At the beginning of February, when they were on a case in New Mexico, JJ stood beside him while they watched Rossi on the other side of the glass, questioning a suspect.

"You're kind of freaking me out, Derek," JJ said softly.

He looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"I've never seen you, or anyone, both so happy and sad at the same time. One minute I look at you and you look like you're practically levitating with joy, and the next minute you look like you're on the verge of tears."

The words stuck in his throat for a moment. He thought he was keeping up a neutral facade; he didn't know he was being that transparent. "We're not supposed to profile each other," he replied.

"I know. I'm sorry. But you've been there for me a lot lately, and I just want you to know I can be there for you."

He looked her in the eye and without blinking said, "I know that. I don't know what you're seeing, but I can assure you that I'm good."

On the flight home he fell asleep and he dreamed. _It was the middle of the night and they were back at the Washington Monument, sitting by the reflecting pool, only this time Emily looked like Melanie. She told him she loved him, and he remembered he promised her he wouldn't ask her to stay. He told her he loved her, too. He let her go and he watched her walk away. _

"Morgan…"

He heard the hushed whisper of JJ's voice and felt her nudge him. He blinked open his eyes in the dim light of the plane where everyone else was still sleeping. He removed his headphones, looking to his right and finding JJ staring at him.

"You kept saying, 'Emily,'" JJ told him quietly.

His heart skipped a beat. "I did?" he asked, hoping she would buy his surprise and confusion. He shrugged, "Sometimes I still think about her. Don't you?"

She stared hard at him for a long time before she slid her eyes away from his and mumbled, "Go back to sleep, Derek. I'll gladly smack you if you start talking in your sleep again."

His heart was beating quickly. Gladly smack him because she was contemplating the possibilities of his current reality and it made her mad? Or gladly smack him so no one else figured it out? How could she possibly put something like that together? His only thought was the woman back at Quantico, one of his best friends who loved and cared openly and freely, but not always sensibly, who wouldn't have told all of his secrets, but who might have innocently said something to JJ like, "Morgan thought she might be alive for awhile." He could see that happening.

He put his headphones back on, and decided he couldn't let himself sleep on the plane anymore.

* * *

><p>She was above him and her head was thrown back while she moved up and down. His hands glanced quietly over her breasts before finding her hips.<p>

She pulled her head forward to look at him. Her hands landed on his chest and her face was right above his. "I wanted to do this so many times after a hard case, just to remind us both we were still alive."

He moved his hips to drive up into her and she gasped. "For how long?" he asked.

She moved her forehead until it was resting against his and pressed her chin towards her chest, so she could watch the two of them joined together and moving at counterpoints. "A long time."

He sighed at the reality of all that lost time and then flipped her over, composing himself. He could concede the lost time, but it was almost the end of February and they only had a month left. He moved inside her and clutched her body closely to his, she pulled his head down and kissed him and he refused in that moment to give up on the idea of a future.

"Where?" he asked.

She stopped moving her body and inhaled. "I don't want you to stop being Derek Morgan for me. I couldn't live with that."

"I won't," he assured her. "I want to know where to find you. I want to be able to visit."

"Monterey, California."

He sighed. He had an answer. He would be able to find her, but it was so far away.

* * *

><p>When March came, a sense of sadness settled over both of them. Work became crazy in the middle of the month, with several back to back cases that kept him away from Baltimore and away from her for almost ten days. He literally thought he was going to go insane, and he blew out of the building and into his car the second Hotch told them all to go home.<p>

It was the third Sunday in March and he had less than a week left until she would be gone. He couldn't stand the thought of it. He didn't get far inside her door before he dropped to his knees, lifted her shirt and pressed gentle kisses on her stomach. He was desperate and she could sense it.

"I don't want to miss a second more of the time I have with you," he murmured against her skin.

She sank to her knees in front of him and placed her hands on his face. "I love you and I don't want to miss a second, either."

He stared at her. "I don't want to just visit you."

She blinked back tears. "How?"

He kissed her and vowed to himself that he would never let her go again. "I love you. I'll find a way."


	7. Chapter 7

The last few days with Melanie, Derek did something he'd never done before: He faked an illness and called in sick to work. "The flu," he told Hotch.

Melanie's contract ended. She turned in the company phone she'd been using to communicate with him and gave him her personal cell number. "This one will come back to Melanie Fielding, so we should be careful until we figure things out," she said.

He went with her when she returned her leased car. They talked about him quitting the BAU.

"You can't just quit, Derek. You hung in there when you were with Savannah when all she wanted you to do was quit. You tried to find out if I was really dead with Penelope's help, and if you up and quit, she would know something was going on and would start searching. Everyone would know something was up; they'd all be overly curious. I love Penelope, but she can't know I'm alive. It's not just about the hurt it would cause her. Everything that makes me love her - her enthusiasm and wearing her heart and her expressions right on her sleeve - is the exact thing that could compromise me. She wouldn't purposefully do it at all, but the searching, digging deeper into my death because she was suspicious, even just talking about it - it's all dangerous."

"I know," he said.

He helped her clean the house. Their eyes kept meeting while they worked, and they both tried not to fall apart, searching for an option that would work for both of them.

"You can't disappear or fake your death. I meant it when I said I couldn't live with that. You couldn't either. Think of your mom. You have to come to me as Derek Morgan somehow."

"I know," he said, his mind swirling.

"The closest field office is San Francisco," she said.

"I already looked. They aren't hiring and no one is set to retire for years. The end result wouldn't be much different than up and quitting anyway. Plus it's over two hours away from Monterey, and that's not the kind of life I want to have with you. I want the peacefulness of that cottage on the beach with you."

She smiled. "Me, too."

He ran into DC to grab her favorite Chinese food for a take-out lunch on Friday, the day before she left. They talked again over lunch.

"Your identity, the down payment on the bed and breakfast and the renovations must have put a major dent in the money you were able to move around."

She nodded. "Pretty significant, about two-thirds is gone. But I ran the numbers, and provided the amount of people book rooms like the realtor and I projected, I'll make enough to pay the bills and live and I'll be able to save what I have left for when I'm older and might need it."

He stared at her, thinking about those numbers, thinking about what she walked away from, and about his own pension that he was going to need in the future. And the income he would need now, because even when he got to Monterey, that couldn't be his main address. He'd need a house somewhere near there, a place for people to come visit him. He'd sell his house in Virginia and have a down payment if he wanted to purchase something, but he'd still have to pay a mortgage or rent on a place he didn't plan to actually live in.

The lies in his mind started stacking up, and he was a terrible liar to the people who counted - the team and his mom. Whatever he was going to do, it was going to have to be in character for him. However he was leaving, it needed to be understandable to the people who cared about him.

He pulled her laptop towards him and sat at the kitchen table and did some research while she packed her clothes, his heart racing at what he was contemplating. After about thirty minutes of searching and reading up on things, he went to the bedroom and stood before her, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.

"What would make me walk away from the FBI and law enforcement all together with no one batting an eye as to why?" he asked.

She looked in his eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking in a second. "Desk duty," she said sadly while shaking her head firmly at him.

"Desk duty," he repeated in agreement. It was absolutely true. The inability to be in the field would shatter someone like Derek Morgan, and would make him move on, and everyone knew it, and no one would question it. The devastation of it would easily make someone like Derek Morgan say, "Fuck it," and want a major change to cope with the reality of no longer being a field agent. If he did it right, he'd have disability retirement and his full pension.

"My knee would be a guarantee for disability retirement at my age," he said neutrally.

Her eyes opened wide in shock before she firmly said, "No! Take me now! Take me to the BAU. I'll tell them I'm back and I faked my death again. And you can just quit and come with me."

"There is no way in hell I'm doing that. I am not going to blow this for you. They'd keep your secret, but they'd talk and process. You're right - it would be too many people knowing. One overheard conversation by the wrong person could light a fire you can't anticipate. London is a long way away, but the connections of those higher up in the FBI and Interpol are there and real. Interpol went after and killed Marcus Simonton because they thought he killed you. Think about the consequences, not just for you."

"Then I'll stay. I'll sell the property in Monterey and I'll stay here until you can slowly fade out of the BAU without anyone wondering why."

"No. That would take months and months; months of lying about a burnout I didn't feel and they'd pick up on it. I'd have to put them in danger to make it convincing and I won't do that. And I'm not taking away what you've dreamed of for years from you. I want a good life with you, where we can just be."

She sank down on the bed and put her hands in her face. "This is awful. Just visit, Derek. Visit and a few years from now you can take early retirement. Enough time will have passed that your quitting won't be associated with me in any way in Penelope's mind. I'll wait for you. And I can fly back here every once in awhile, too. Or just wait a year, that would probably be enough time."

He clenched his jaw, determined, and removed her hands from her face so he could look at her. "Flying back and forth to California frequently isn't going to help keep your identity concealed either. Besides, I'm not waiting any longer than I absolutely have to."

She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her forehead against his stomach. "A planned injury is worse than a planned death - you have to face all the people you're trying to deceive."

"Except that I won't have to say much at all as soon as I get that disabled classification. If it happened in the line of duty, it would be an almost guarantee that I'd get disability retirement. I'd only have to fake being in denial or depressed about that for a short while, and it wouldn't even be that hard or feel like a lie because Derek Morgan would be depressed about that, the old him. This him is ready for you and California."

"I don't want you to do this for me," she cried.

He crouched in front of her and brushed his lips against hers. "What if I'm doing it for me? For us? What if I know that being with you is exactly what I want and I think it would be worth it?"

She shook her head again, but not as emphatically. "Promise me you'll think about it after I leave. Think and make sure it's really what you want. You're desperate right now, searching for an option, because it's my last night here. You might feel differently in a few days or weeks."

He knew he wasn't going to change his mind. She'd let go of and risked a hell of a lot to get to this point, and risked everything to come back to him. He was going to protect her and be with her as quickly as possible. The way he saw it, he had two options: Tell the truth to one other person who would be the most likely to understand and help him pull this off, or tell Penelope and hope she could hold it in while he went through the process of quitting. He loved Penelope, but didn't think she could pull it off, not totally. She'd be too emotional.

"I promise I'll think about it, but it's your last night here, so let's stop talking about this." He kissed her and after a minute, he felt her relax against him and nod her head.

They didn't sleep that night. They both tried to forget it was the last night, and he tried to memorize every inch of her with his mouth and hands and body.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to just be Emily, just for one night, but he didn't. And it didn't matter, because when he pulled her pants off and trailed his lips up her torso, through the valley between her breasts and found her mouth again, she sighed, "Derek," and the accent was gone.

He heard her tell him she loved him with her real voice. He heard her pleading and gasping with her real voice. He heard his name the way he always imagined it would fall from her lips when they were making love.

And he called her Emily the whole night and she never blinked.

It was an entirely different world from the last time they said goodbye, on the edge of the reflecting pool in DC, when he'd held his true feelings back, and he now knew she had, too. They left nothing behind in that bed, in a random row house in Baltimore that belonged to someone else.

When dawn was just barely making the bedroom window a little lighter, he studied her face and ran his fingers over her slightly sweaty forehead while he caught his breath.

She raised her eyes to his and studied his face intently, and brought them back to the conversation from the evening before. "You can't pull something like that off alone," she said softly.

"I know," he sighed.

"I don't want you to have to do this at all, but I trust your judgement. I always have."

He nodded and understood. He could do what he needed to do to get to her, and she trusted he'd do it in a way that protected her.

He wished morning away with all his might, but it came anyway. And when light was fully filling the bedroom, his eyes were drawn to the two impersonal suitcases that sat packed in the bedroom - the contents of her entire forty-seven years of life condensed into such a small space, and containing nothing from her past.

She moved to get in the shower, and his body wanted to go with her, but his heart felt something else. He left her a note that said he'd be back in time to take her to the airport, and he quietly slipped out of the house. He drove quickly, got what he needed and returned.

She was standing in the entryway when he came back, probably worried about the time. He was cutting it close. The hand behind his back moved and handed her back the copy of Slaughterhouse Five. "I've held onto this every minute for over a decade. It's my most prized possession. But it was yours before it was mine. You hold onto it now and know I'm coming for you. I can't call you and talk about plans. It would be a bad move for me to have a connection to California before I got there. But I'll make a new account and email you from other computers. I'll figure it out. And I will be there as Derek Morgan, alive and loving you. I promise."

She blinked quickly at him and looked down at the book. She opened the cover and found her note and handed it to him. "For you to hold onto until you get there. I won't let go, and if you can't do this or find another way, I'll come back. I will."

He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her beautiful face that had stopped looking so different to him, that was just her now. "A simple life and a cottage by the sea, with you. That's what I'm coming to and I'll make it."

* * *

><p><em>It was the beginning of March 2015, a Wednesday, a little over a month before they went to Emily's funeral in London.<em>

Savannah was working the night shift. He knew Jack had a basketball game that night, Hotch had mentioned it earlier in the day. He went to Hotch's office at five o'clock and said, "Give me the paperwork. Go to his game."

_Hotch gave him a small, grateful smile and handed the paperwork off to Derek. Derek quietly worked at his desk for a few hours before deciding he needed a cup of coffee if he was going to finish his work. _

_He stood and saw the bullpen deserted. But there was a soft light coming from JJ's old office. Curious, he bypassed coffee and went there. He found her with her head bent forward against her arms, crying. _

"_JJ," he said softly. _

_She raised her head and looked at him before her face became a waterfall of tears. "It's strange," she gasped out, "When I feel like this and need to talk to someone, I always think of you first, but the opportunity never seems to be there."_

_He was confused, but closed the door behind him and sat down in the chair in front of the desk. "Why me, and what do you feel like? You can tell me anything." _

"_I know I can. I know I can because when I flew with Emily to Paris, after I lied to all of you and told you she was dead, after she recovered and could travel, she spent a good portion of that flight contemplating and discussing the need to tell you the truth. I never knew how close the two of you were before that flight, and she held her secrets better than anyone I've ever known, but she wanted to let you in on them. I was under orders from Hotch, and I followed them and told you nothing, and I hated it. But I thought to myself, 'If ever there was a person who could understand and listen, it must be Derek because Emily seemed to have opened up to him.'"_

_He felt overwhelmed and stunned by her words. Emily had wanted him to know she was alive back then, had talked about it, had talked about him to JJ. But Emily was in London and had been for years, and JJ clearly needed a friend right now. _

"_JJ, I've known you and cared about you for over a decade. You can trust me. What's wrong?" _

_And she told him. She told him about her miscarriage. She told him about the dreams and visions that haunted her. She told him about trying to talk to Reid about this, who was sweet and cared about her, but couldn't really grasp the whole emotional spectrum of it all. He moved closer to her while she talked. They ended up on the floor together, her in his arms while she sobbed. _

_He checked in with her, quietly and frequently after that. Emily's funeral was a setback they'd not anticipated, but despite that, over the next year, the more they talked, JJ started getting better and stronger until she was almost completely back to herself._

* * *

><p>He did think about putting himself on disability, like he promised her. He thought about it while he went about his life between work and home and missed her more each day. He didn't change his mind.<p>

He needed a Clyde Easter, not to help him fake his death, but to take him out of commission, to give him access to disability retirement and his pension. It was fraud, and it was lying, but he'd given enough, too, and it was something he could live with. He was forty-six years old and had given over twenty years of service to law enforcement, most of that with the FBI. He deserved what he'd get, he'd just be taking it a little early. It was lying, but it was lying to entities he didn't know in most ways. It was almost full-proof if he wanted to get the hell out of Quantico without anyone wondering why. It would involve lies to the people he cared about, but most of the real lies would come when he was understandably away from them, and he could pull that off.

His leaving was going to be a storm no matter what, and his only thought was sheltering Emily through that in the safest way possible for her.

He found JJ at the gym she worked out in on the following Saturday morning.

"Want to go for a run?" he asked.

She was sweaty and had clearly already put in a workout, but she knew he wouldn't be there if it wasn't important. She looked at the clock on the wall and said, "I have about thirty minutes before I need to shower and get Henry to a birthday party."

"Thirty minutes should do it," Derek said.

They didn't go far before Derek slowed the run to a walk. "We go into homes and buildings together all the time where there's danger."

He felt her glance at him. "We do."

"Frequently there are situations where it's just the two of us and there is enough gunfire or chaos to make it confusing."

JJ stopped walking all together and turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised. "True," she said uncertainly.

"The next time that happens, I need you to take out my knee," he said without hesitation.

Her eyes opened in shock. "What the fuck are you talking about?" she hissed.

"I need you to take out my knee when the situation's right. I'll corroborate it was an accident and there won't be any consequences for you. I need you to do this for me and never tell another soul ever. I trust you."

He saw the tears in her eyes before she turned her head and started walking again. "If I do that, you'll need knee replacement or extensive pins and screws, you'll likely never pass your physical and run times and never be cleared to be in the field again. And you'll be gone?"

Derek clenched his jaw and nodded as an answer. They walked in silence for awhile, her brushing away tears, and him swallowing with difficulty.

"Why these drastic measures? Why not just quit?" she asked. And then said, "Nevermind," before he could answer. "You don't want to lie and be caught, you want the reason you're quitting to need no explanation so people, mostly Garcia, will understand and let you go without snooping too much."

He nodded again, and JJ gulped in some air. "I got the call that Emily was awake in Bethesda three days after her funeral. I went there and had to inform her that everyone thought she was dead and we'd already buried her. She started crying immediately and turned her head away from me and the first word she said was, "Morgan."

JJ stopped walking a few steps later and turned to face him again. "Penelope told me in October that you had thought briefly that she was alive. Wherever you're going, she's there, isn't she?"

He looked her in the eyes and tried to convey the seriousness behind the lie he knew she would read. "I don't know who you're talking about."

JJ glanced up at the sky, taking a deep breath and trying to compose herself. They started walking again and headed back towards the gym in silence. When they got to the doors she turned to look at him. "I won't tell anyone about this conversation and I'll think about it."

"Thank you," he replied. He hadn't expected an answer right away, but he knew he could trust her.

* * *

><p>He spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday attending to the house he'd neglected for three months. He drove to an internet cafe on Sunday afternoon and sent an email to Melanie, just telling her he loved her and that he was working on things.<p>

On Monday morning he pulled into the parking garage at headquarters and the passenger side door opened before he'd turned off his engine.

JJ sat beside him in the car. "I spent the past two days trying to find you a different way out of this. There was nothing that was even remotely short-term. And I realized you'd probably already gone down the path of options in your head."

"I have."

"You realize you're essentially asking me to commit fraud and break the law?"

He touched her shoulder. "I do."

"And you are asking me to hold back a secret from everyone again, which sucks ass, Derek."

He sighed. "I know. You don't have to do this, JJ. I know what I'm asking and I'm okay with you saying you can't. I'll figure something else out."

She lifted her feet to his dashboard and tilted her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. "You'll be happy?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

She turned to look him in the eye. "And she'll be happy?"

He internally fought acknowledging it, but she deserved this truth. "Yes," he said.

She stared at him and barely held her tears back. "Folie a deux."

_A madness shared by two. _

"It doesn't feel like madness."

She finally smiled at him and laughed lightly. Her hand reached out to squeeze his hand. "You'll be thinking differently when that bullet hits you."

"Thank you," he breathed.

"Don't thank me yet. We still have to pull this off."

* * *

><p>It was May before the opportunity came. They burst into a house in West Virginia, looking for an unsub, a house where all of the windows were covered in plywood and dark. They were ten minutes ahead of the rest of the team. They searched the main floor before heading down to the basement. It was a large, dark basement, the flashlights attached to their guns providing the only light. She went one way around the stairs and he went the other way.<p>

They found the unsub as he emerged from behind a large shelving unit, a gun in his hand. Derek didn't have a clear shot without potentially shooting JJ, but JJ did have that shot. She ordered the unsub to drop the weapon, and Derek watched her in fear while the unsub shot and she dove. She took her shot and the unsub fell.

"JJ," Derek hissed.

She rushed forward, checked the unsub's pulse, and then moved her body. She turned the gun that was still in the unsub's hand towards him. It happened in an instant. He couldn't see her face at all, blinded by the light coming from her gun that she was now holding in her left hand, but he felt the burst of excruciating pain a second later when the bullet from the unsub's gun ripped through his knee. He screamed and fell to the ground.

Seconds later, he felt one gentle hand on his cheek, her tears already falling, and he felt her bend over him, her mouth by his ear. "When you get to her, tell her I love her and I understand," she whispered.

He was in horrible pain, but he didn't feel it as completely as he should have. All he could think about was Emily, and JJ, his friend who'd done this for him, for them. He marveled at her brilliance. He'd anticipated she'd shoot him with her gun and they'd have to make up a story about an accident. He clasped her hand that was on his cheek. "Thank you, JJ." he moaned in pain. And then the tears came, not because of his pain, but because he'd never have JJ's back again after this, he'd never have any of their back's again. The totality of what he'd done and what she'd done for him came crashing over him.

He felt sweat break out on his forehead, and prepared himself for the shock that was about to come. The pain took over then, and he groaned and squeezed her hand.

There were footsteps on the stairs and JJ switched into a new role perfectly. She moved and put pressure on his knee and he screamed in agony. "We need a medic!" she yelled.

"What happened? asked Hotch as he knelt on the ground near Derek.

"The unsub shot Derek when he came around the corner. His knee," she cried.

There were more people and more lights in the room, and Derek could see them now. Just before he passed out from the pain, he caught Hotch and Rossi's eyes and saw that they knew what being shot in the knee might actually mean for Derek.

And JJ's eyes shining with tears, but with a barely perceptible smile for him.

His eyes slipped shut and his last conscious thought was of a cottage right on the beach, and Emily beside him. And he thought, _the loss is worth the gain. _


	8. Chapter 8

The first two days in the hospital in West Virginia were a haze of drugs, pain in his left leg, doctors and nurses. He was aware at one point of JJ holding his hand while the doctor talked to Hotch. The words, "Full knee replacement surgery," registered in his ears and he fought through the fuzzy feeling in his head to turn and look at JJ. There would be no wait-and-see situation here; the documents necessary for disability retirement could be signed before he left the hospital. Sprinting and running were a thing of his past. He didn't smile at JJ, and her face was relatively expressionless, because Hotch was right there. But she squeezed his hand.

After that, he was able to transfer to a hospital closer to home. Hotch originally told him "Bethesda," but he balked at that. He didn't want to potentially see Savannah, not now.

He was wheelchair and bed bound in the hospital, waiting for the swelling to go down so he could have his surgery. The sadness he felt when the team came to visit was real. They were all devastated, and guilt surged in him, but he didn't have to lie when he saw their sad faces; he rode the waves of emotion with them because he was actually feeling them, absorbing the full impact of how completely his life had changed.

Hotch pondered out loud a desk duty job with the team, but Derek shook his head. "That would be worse than anything, being with you all and not able to be out in the field." Also not a lie.

"Think about it," Hotch said.

There wasn't anything to think about. The rules were simple - Derek was an SSA, and he couldn't be an SSA anymore with this injury. The FBI could offer him a different position, but he didn't have to take it. If he couldn't work in his same category after being shot in the line of duty, disability retirement was pretty much his for the taking.

Seeing Penelope was the most difficult, as he knew it would be. He'd done this in large part because of her, because of everything about her he loved, and he needed her to let him go. But he cared about her and at least felt like he wasn't doing the worst, disappearing. He could still be part of her life. She held his hand a lot, but didn't ask much of him in terms of conversation at the beginning.

He called his mom, and he cried real tears on the phone. He was in pain, and his life was altered, and even though it was his choice and he knew he ultimately wouldn't be sorry, the immediate reality of it all was difficult for him. She asked if he wanted her to come, but he couldn't have her there. He couldn't have her around the team where she might potentially, innocently ask him about Melanie.

The thing that helped him feel stronger was the idea of Emily in a hospital in London, completely alone in the world, but doing what she needed to do for herself. He wasn't alone, he was still Derek Morgan, and he was doing what he wanted and needed to do for himself and for her.

JJ expressed the appropriate guilt about him getting shot when she visited in the evenings because usually someone else on the team was there. But the one time she had a window to see him alone she asked, "Still feeling like it's not madness?"

"I just need to get through all of this. I'll be fine once I get there," he replied. "I'll be better than fine, JJ. I think I'll be so happy I won't know what to do with myself."

She touched his face and smiled. "Good. Because if you told me it wasn't worth it, I might have to shoot you again."

He laughed. It felt good to laugh.

JJ stopped coming by in the evenings when there were other people around and instead started coming early in the mornings, on her way to work. It helped immensely, having someone he could be relatively honest with. And he did honestly answer her questions and freely talk with her because they were tied together now, forever, because she'd done this for him.

Her second morning there, he asked her if he could borrow her phone. He'd told Melanie virtually nothing via email, and hadn't called her number with his phone. He wanted no evidence of the plan, even if was being sent from an anonymous email on an anonymous computer. It was barely dawn in California, but he took JJ's phone and dialed the phone number Melanie had given him that he'd committed to memory.

She must have recognized the number because there was apprehension and tension in her voice when she answered with a shaky, sleepy, "Hello?"

Tears came to Derek's eyes, and they weren't tears of sadness finally, but of happiness, at the sound of her voice, at the fact that he would be with her in the very near future.

"I hope you'll still love me with a limp." he said quietly into the phone, a smile spreading across his face.

"Derek," she sighed, and then she started crying. "I love you, Derek. I'm so sorry that my life and my choices made you choose this."

"Please don't be sorry. You didn't make me choose anything. I'll be there soon and there's nothing I want more than that. It's worth it. What's it like there?"

"It's amazing," she sighed. "I bought all the furniture and decorations and am putting in the finishing touches. I posted bookings online and I open Memorial Day weekend. I'm pretty much booked solid already on the weekends all summer, and most of the weeks, too. And at the cottage? I bought two chairs for the porch. I haven't sat in mine yet, though. I'm waiting to watch my first sunset out there with you. I can't wait for you to get here and live this with me, Derek."

He could hear the happiness and anticipation in her voice and all thoughts about his knee and the dull pain in his leg vanished.

"Me either. I won't make it for the opening, but I'll be there soon after. I have to do this right. I love you."

"I love you, too. This is JJ's number. She helped you and she knows?" she asked.

He glanced at JJ, who was smiling at him while she listened to his end of the conversation. "Yes."

Emily was quiet on the phone. He heard her take a shaky breath. "Can I talk to her?"

Derek moved the phone and reached out to hand it to JJ, who looked almost scared at first, and slowly reached out to take the phone from him.

"Em?" she whispered.

He didn't know what Emily told her on the phone, but he watched a range of emotions cross JJ's face, first tears, and then laughter and then a combination of both. He watched JJ sit in a chair next to his hospital bed and laugh and cry, and he smiled at their reunion.

Hotch and Rossi would have done this for him if he asked, each for different reasons. But he'd chosen JJ, not just because he trusted her completely, but because he knew if only one other person could know Emily was still alive, she'd want JJ back in her life the most. And JJ needed her, too.

* * *

><p>Forty-eight hours after his knee replacement surgery, his doctor started him on excruciating physical therapy, but it got better each day. JJ came and slipped him a burn phone so he could call Emily. "As far as cloak and dagger bullshit goes, this doesn't feel like bullshit at all," she told him with a smile on her face.<p>

She was his ace in the hole; never once would it cross anyone's mind that she might shoot him so he could leave the FBI. He thanked the world for her everyday.

The team visited and Derek started planting the seeds necessary to pull this off. "This is so hard. I feel like I just need some time to myself to process all of this," was the first sentiment he shared.

Everyone nodded sympathetically, even Garcia.

He called a realtor he'd worked with before and asked him to put his house on the market.

Reid came to visit one evening by himself and Derek told him, "I'm thinking of traveling just to get my head together. We've seen so many places in the United States under horrible circumstances, and I want to visit them again just to enjoy them."

Reid launched into a long narrative about statistics and how people typically cope with life-altering injuries like this. He conceded that traveling might be good for Derek. Derek listened and saved his smile until Reid walked out the door. He'd miss Reid a lot, he'd miss them all, but he could still visit, and, in time, they could visit him, too. And he knew Reid would go back to the BAU and pave a path for him with his lengthy explanations.

His goal was that before he got out of the hospital, they'd all accept the fact that he was going to get on the road. He'd carefully figure the rest out after.

He knew he was getting his wish when Penelope came to drive him home from the hospital ten days later and cried, but controlled herself pretty well. "Where will you go?" she asked when they got to his house and saw the "For Sale" sign in the front yard.

"I haven't decided. I'll probably visit my mom and sisters first, and then figure it out from there. I've never had any time to do anything like this, Pen. It just feels right for the time being, something that will keep me from getting depressed about this. I just need some quiet time totally off the grid."

"But you'll come back?"

He smiled and hugged her. "I don't know where I'll settle, but wherever that is, you'll know, and you can come visit, and I'll visit you, I promise. You're my girl. I couldn't get by in life without you. I just need to figure things out for a bit. I can't be here around all of you and this life while trying to figure out my new life." _Mostly true, just vague,_ he thought.

She cried, but nodded. And he had tears in his eyes, too, because he really would miss her. So much.

That night he went through the thick stack of mail that had been pushed through his mail slot in his absence. He found one envelope with no return address, postmarked California. He opened it and found a picture of two chairs on the porch of a small cottage, and because of angle it was taken, he could see the sand and the ocean in the distance.

* * *

><p>His house sold quickly. He'd taken a little less money from a buyer who wanted a fast escrow. He spent the third weekend in June walking around with a cane, packing things up to go into storage. The team came by to help, and he lived through their questions with more vague, honest answers.<p>

Hotch was almost worse than Penelope; they'd worked together a very long time. "Things can change in an instant, Hotch. You won't get back your time with Jack."

He dished out parting words of wisdom and love for all of them however he could.

He felt like he spent his time with anyone around the team with his jaw clenched, trying to keep his emotions in check. He was free around JJ, and that was it. But at night, he fell asleep with a smile on his face, just counting the days.

Everything was moved out of his house and the paperwork was signed. On the last Monday in June, he drove to Quantico with a couple of suitcases and a back seat full of a some personal items. He walked into headquarters for the final time with a cane in his hand and the sense of loss clenching his heart. He signed the necessary paperwork, he turned in his badge. He expressed genuine, sad emotions with them when he hugged them all goodbye.

Penelope was inconsolable and JJ stepped in to help him carry his box of personal items to his car.

"She said she's looking forward to a visit from me," JJ said with a smile and teary eyes when they reached his car.

Derek tried to lighten the mood by rolling his eyes, "The girl talk will be endless. I'll find something else to do while you're there."

JJ laughed, trying to let him go easy. And he could have, he could have gotten in his car and driven away, but he couldn't. He wrapped her in a hug and whispered, "This job...it's too much sometimes, JJ. You can walk away free and clear, with no one after you and happiness in your future. You can do that anytime and you deserve that happiness."

She clung to him and cried. "I know. It just feels like it's so much of who I am."

He kissed her head. "I understand. But you're so much more than this, Jennifer Jareau. You think about that and try to believe it."

He felt her nod against him and then pull away. He watched her wipe her eyes. "I'll keep Garcia at bay, talk her down from her ledges about you being gone. I'll make sure she's okay."

He nodded his thanks. He felt like he had so much more he could say, but she shook her head at him and smiled. "Go, Derek."


	9. Chapter 9

The nine-hour drive to Chicago took almost twelve, with frequent stops where he got out to stretch and bend his knee. That many hours in the car was too much for him right now, as his knee started swelling after about seven hours, and he mentally adjusted his drive times for the next leg of his journey. It was late enough when he got to his mom's house that he thought she'd be asleep, but she was waiting up for him.

He'd maintained his composure pretty well when he left the BAU, but his mom standing there in the doorway, with a concerned look and love pouring out of her, was his undoing.

"Mom," he sighed when he saw her there while he slowly clamored up the steps.

He'd kept every awful secret away from his mother when he was a teenager, protecting her from his own horrors so she didn't have to live through more. Then he'd bottled them all up, and the only time he'd ever talked about those horrors was with Emily over a decade before.

It was still difficult for him to let his mom see his sadness, but this current situation wasn't a horror, it was a loss he'd chosen for a gain that was worth it, but it was still a loss.

She was the recipient of every emotion he'd held back the past several weeks, every fear of not quite knowing who he was now without a badge and gun. It's not that he didn't know what he was heading to, or didn't want it. He wanted it - her - with every ounce of his being, but there was still grief there, too, a grief he couldn't freely share until he felt his mom's arms around him.

He didn't tell her anything specific at all about his future, but she was Fran Morgan, his mother, and she would keep his secrets, and would know if he was lying.

So when she asked, "And now that this has happened, where are you going?"

He answered, "California, but I'll visit."

"To Melanie?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. He considered the possibility that a concerned Garcia could actually call his mother and tacked on, "But no one else knows about her."

She didn't ask him why and didn't press for more details than that, probably sensing that she might be putting him in a position to lie to her, not fully understanding but respecting his choices. She squeezed his hand and whispered, "And no one else will until you tell me it's okay. I just want you to be happy."

"I will be."

It was summer in Chicago, and he gave his mom three full days of his time with no interruptions, visiting museums and restaurants she loved. He smiled at his mom's smile, and fed off her relaxation. Her son may be going farther away, but he wasn't running off with a gun to face criminals anymore, and he would never be called away from a visit with her because of a case again. His injury was difficult for her, but the results weren't.

He left his mom on Friday morning, promising to frequently keep in touch. He gave her the number of his burn phone, explaining the desire to be off the grid for awhile, but wanting her to be able to reach him if she needed to. She let him go without asking him precisely where in California he was heading, knowing just by looking at him that he was going off to safety and love, which was better for her than how she'd been living the past two decades, with him leaving her to go off to danger.

A block from his mom's house, he stopped to call Penelope and told her he was getting on the road and was going to lay low for awhile, but that he'd be in touch. She was tearful, but understanding. "I love you, Penelope Garcia. I'll call you in a week," he said. He powered off his main cell phone and disabled the GPS on his car. He withdrew the cash needed for this journey to avoid credit cards. He'd give her a vague idea of where he ended up soon enough, but he didn't want her to watch how fast he was trying to get there.

He called Emily and told her, "Tuesday. I'll be there by sunset."

Two hours later, he merged onto Interstate 80 and settled in for the two thousand plus miles ahead of him.

* * *

><p><em>After they came back from Chicago in 2006, when Carl Buford was in jail, both Hotch and Gideon had approached him to see if he wanted to talk, and he'd declined. He'd never talked about it before, and he didn't intend to. <em>_But a couple months after that, he'd found his way to Emily's door, and he'd spilled every, awful detail.  
><em>

_It was so foreign to him, sitting there with Emily's arms around him, a woman he'd only known a few months, talking about the horrors he'd lived through as a teenager that had made him feel his entire adulthood that he wasn't truly whole. It felt foreign and so immediately right. _

__That night she'd brought him a blanket and a pillow. _Once he'd settled on her couch, she'd smiled at him, gently touched his shoulder and said, "Our secrets only define us as much as we let them." _

_That next morning, and every day after, she still treated him like he was whole, just the way he was. She knew everything, and through the ups and downs of their time as friends and colleagues, she never once let his darkest secret feel like it defined him in any way, until it internally felt like it didn't define him at all anymore. _

_He knew she held back a lot, and he knew she had secrets that may not have necessarily been defining her, but they were shaping her life, and she didn't share them.  
><em>

_It was easy to not be mad when she came back from Paris, not because he knew it had been Hotch's decision without Emily's say, but because her hiding out for several months was no different than the internal hiding he'd done for years. He knew people didn't share their secrets in the same way: His secret had exploded one night in her arms, and her secrets leaked slowly into his life, in bits and pieces, and not always on a the timeline he would have preferred, but they still came to him eventually._

_He'd shared his secret with her in a quick burst of flame he needed to get out and expel from his life; and she'd needed him to help stomp out the little sparks she was able to let go of here and there. _

_When the end came for Emily and she emerged as Melanie and she could have hidden away forever, she came back to him, and told him all the rest of her secrets. When there was nothing left to tell, all they wanted to do was be with each other. That was what truly mattered. That was the story of their lives he wanted to make sure counted the most in the end. _

* * *

><p>He passed exits for cities and towns he'd been to on cases, and the longer he drove, the more the small bits of lingering sadness left him. Instead, he found himself finding positive memories from those cases, times when he'd laughed with the team, eccentric and funny exchanges with Penelope on the phone. He stopped like he was supposed to to stretch and move his knee around, and slept in hotels when he was too tired to drive, but the more miles he left behind, the more the excitement built and the wider his smile grew.<p>

He slept in Salt Lake City on Sunday night, with plans to sleep somewhere in Nevada on Monday, but seven hours into that long, flat drive through Utah and Nevada he saw the first road sign that listed the distance to the California border and all thoughts of sleep left him. He was so close, and sunrise on Tuesday sounded a hell of a lot better than waiting for sunset. He still stopped to stretch and he alternated between ibuprofen and aspirin. He drank coffee, and he drove.

He took the freeway exchanges through the San Francisco Bay Area and cut onto Highway 1 South in Santa Cruz a little after four-thirty in the morning on Tuesday. His eyes felt raw from being awake for so many hours, and his knee was swollen from the long car ride, but he was less than an hour away. He rolled down his passenger window, and on the dark and nearly deserted freeway, he could smell the ocean and on some parts of the drive, he could hear the faint sounds of waves crashing.

There was the first hint of light in the sky when he parked on the street by the bed and breakfast. He could feel the sea breeze and he inhaled deeply, taking it in. He saw the porch light on the large house with the gabled roof, the house were people could rent rooms, but what he was looking for was a small cottage a little beyond that house. He wanted to run to that cottage, but he could barely move his knee after the hours on the road. He took a moment to stretch before limping through the gate.

A gate where he saw a little sign that named the bed and breakfast: _Our Secret._ He smiled; this was the secret he'd gladly let define them.

He walked down the path past the main house and saw the Pacific stretching out for unending miles beyond the edge of the property and he saw the cottage. He dialed Melanie's number.

"Derek?" she answered groggily and slightly worried.

"It was October 2009 when you first told me about wanting to disappear to a cottage by the ocean, and while you explained it to me, I remembered thinking of myself there with you, that I couldn't imagine my life without you."

"I remember. And I thought the same thing when I described that. You were there with me in my mind," she said softly.

"Then open the door, because I'm here."

He saw a light go on in the cottage and she was at the door seconds later, wearing pajama pants and a tank top, with bed-tousled hair and a shocked look on her face. The shock quickly melted away and a smile lit up her face and eyes, eyes he would know anywhere. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, tossing his phone on the table by the front door. His hands reached to cup her cheeks and he smiled and laughed quietly, not quite believing he was there.

His lips brushed against hers gently at first before the rush of emotion overtook him and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. He felt her arms wrap around the back of neck, and deepened the kiss further. They came up for air a minute later and he leaned his forehead against hers and they both smiled.

"You drove all night?" she asked.

"I saw the first road sign that said California and I couldn't stop."

Her hand move from his neck and down his arm until she found his hand, guiding him gently through the small living room and through the open double doors that led to the bedroom. She saw him limp quite a bit and concern crossed her face, but he shook his head at her. "It's just because I was sitting in the car for so long."

They got to the edge of the bed and he reached out to smooth the concerned lines on her forehead. "It's really okay," he said softly.

"You should get some rest."

He smiled and skimmed his hands down her sides to the bottom of her tank top. "Not a chance. Not yet," he murmured before his lips found hers again. He wanted to hear about everything, he wanted to see everything, and he wanted to tell her everything that had happened in the past three months, but not just then. He only had eyes for her, and he wanted to feel her again and take in the fact that this was real and permanent.

Their clothing came off slowly, and he hadn't forgotten a thing about how her skin felt. This time it was her hands that traced love and healing over the scars on his knee in the dim light of dawn while he laid back on the bed. He could see her on the verge of tears and he smiled at her. "Totally worth it," he whispered, and she gave him a small nod, letting it go for the moment.

She carefully moved her body until her legs were straddling his hips and leaned over to kiss him, sighing into his mouth when his hands moved to her breasts. He really couldn't use his leg well at the moment to flip them over or maneuver himself, but she responded to his touches and let his hands guide her body where he wanted it. She placed her hands on either side of his head and moved forward so he could reach her chest with his mouth, her head dropping forward and soft sounds escaping her mouth as his mouth and tongue moved over her.

She moved back towards his hips when his hands gentle pushed her in that direction and smiled at him before kissing him again. She used her hand to move him in the right position and slowly sank down on top of him. He grabbed her hips to still any motion for a second. "I love you," he told her.

She grinned and her hand touched his face, "You're still Derek Morgan, and you're here and I love you, too."

Light filled the bedroom more fully as the sun came up, and there was a window open somewhere in the cottage; he could feel the comfortable breeze and hear the crashing waves clearly. He watched her move on top of him, totally free and happy; she was the most stunning thing he'd ever seen. It was like the first time all over again because it was so different and powerful, this sense of forever.

She set an agonizingly slow pace, but he still felt like this was going to end too quickly. He knew he should close his eyes and stop watching her if he was going to last, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from her. He moved his hand off her body and slipped it into the silky wetness between her legs, watching her gasp as he started moving his fingers against her. Soon after that he felt her inner muscles tightening around him and she threw her body forward, kissing him and moaning loudly in his mouth as her body trembled and her movements became erratic. Seconds later his hands moved to grasp her hips firmly and he returned the moan, pulling his mouth away from hers and leaning his head back slightly, overwhelmed by everything he was feeling.

He felt her lips on his face and neck as he came back to the present, and felt her move her body, laying on top of him, but her lower half angled away from his left knee.

"You're here," she whispered, like she was finally, completely believing it. And her smile was radiant.

He smiled back at her, completely relaxed and more content than he'd ever felt in his life, but exhaustion was quickly taking over and he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. He felt her slide off his body to the side and felt covers pulled over him. Her hand was on his face, and his eyes slipped shut. "I love you," he whispered.

"I love you. Sleep now, Derek. I'll be here when you wake up," he heard her say softly.

_If this was the sunrise, I can't wait for the sunset,_ he thought, but he must have said it out loud.

Because before he completely drifted off, he felt her mouth by his ear and heard her whisper, "Me either."

* * *

><p><em>AN - I am having a hard time letting go of this story, so you're going to get at least one more chapter. Thanks for all of the reviews. They make my day! :)  
><em>


	10. Chapter 10

_He was always careful with Emily, knowing that pressing too much or saying the wrong thing could send her scurrying back into a shell that it would take her weeks to emerge from. But the third week she was back from Paris and in a new apartment, she invited him over after work.  
><em>

_The first surprise was how she almost exuberantly hugged him when he arrived. The second was that after they ate their take-out and drank wine while he caught her up on everything she'd missed while she was gone, she reclined on her couch and rested her feet on his thigh. He didn't quite know what to make of it; it didn't feel romantic at all, just friendly, but Emily was not usually this openly affectionate. So he risked a question that had been on his mind. "Did you volunteer to go in with Doyle, or were you assigned?" _

_A blush tinged her cheeks and she sat up, taking a few large sips from her wine glass. "You were pissed when you found out just how deeply I'd gone undercover to get that profile, weren't you?"_

_He didn't bother denying it. "I was." _

_She nodded and poured herself another glass of wine. "I was asked if I'd be willing to do it, and I said I would. I didn't know how hard it would be." _

_He watched her body tense, her spine stiffen, and he wished he could take his initial question back and have her relaxed again. She drank her wine quickly and didn't look at him, and he shifted his position so he was a little closer to her on the couch, gingerly reaching out a hand and placing it on her back. "I'm sorry I said anything," he said softly. _

_She shook her head slightly, but didn't say anything. She drank and he sat there quietly beside her. After several minutes he watched her take a deep breath and barely heard her soft words, "It was awful and confusing. Doyle was a terrifying person and I faked my way through what boiled down to an emotionally abusive relationship because of my job. It fucked with my head in a way you can't even imagine. I still haven't gotten over it. The first and only long-term relationship I had was with a sociopath as part of an assignment. When I got out of that situation, I shut down that part of my life. You've asked me a few times over the years why I don't date much at all, and that's your answer. I'm not sure I know how to have a real, healthy relationship, and I'd rather focus on my job and not spend too much time trying to figure it out. I'd rather have nothing than invest that energy only to fail miserably at it." _

_"Emily," he quietly whispered. _

_She cried then, leaning against him, and the small bits of frustration he felt towards her for not telling him months before about what was going on with her disappeared. He held her and she cried and he couldn't find words. She'd never shown him this much emotion before. _

_The alcohol took over soon after that, her tears waned and he felt her sagging against him. He took her to her bedroom and watched her struggle out of her pants before flopping on her bed. He averted his eyes from her legs and underwear. He moved the covers and got her settled. _

_"It's why I want to disappear. I feel like it's my only chance at trying for a real life. Never want to hurt you," she murmured. _

_"I know," he said before kissing her forehead. She passed out and he let his hands linger for a few seconds on her face. _

_He cleaned up their dinner, washed the dishes, the whole time thinking that the problem was that she'd convinced herself that she was more damaged than she actually was. He knew that feeling, and she'd made him believe that he wasn't damaged at all, but he didn't know how to do that for her. _

_He was surprised when the level of affection she'd shown him stuck around for awhile after that night. He wasn't surprised when she finally pulled back and started retreating, though. It was something he'd anticipated and sadly accepted. He felt like he was missing the mark with her, but he felt stuck. If he pushed too much, he was afraid she'd completely close herself off from him. So he followed her lead and watched her for those months, trying to find a break that would allow him to reach inside and maybe pull Emily Prentiss towards him, and instead he ended up watching her get on a plane to London._

* * *

><p>He woke up a little after one o'clock in the afternoon that first Tuesday in Monterey. It took him a moment to remember where he was. He thought back to the dream he'd been having, about that night in Emily's apartment so many years before. He first thought that night that she was drunk and slightly slurry and had meant to say, "<em>I never wanted to hurt you," <em>talking about faking her death, but he had more clarity now. She wouldn't have said it if she hadn't been drinking, but she had meant what she said. She didn't want to hurt him, present tense. She knew exactly how he felt about her back then, and she felt the same way, but she didn't want to open herself up to that, fail and hurt him. It took her completely erasing her identity to take a chance, and believe she wouldn't fail at this and wouldn't hurt him.

He blinked open his eyes. He was laying on his right side and he saw his suitcases and boxes in the room, and his bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin on the bedside table, along with a glass of water. He took in the sights and sounds and smells around him. It felt like there were several windows open and he could feel the comfortable breeze, warm and crisp at the same time. The bedroom was simple and bright, with light wood and white bedding, the walls a soft grey-blue color. He could smell a mixture of coffee and the ocean and hear the distant sounds of voices, people on the beach.

And behind him, the very faint sound of breathing, and the soft touch of a warm hand on his shoulder. He turned over and saw Melanie sitting up in bed reading. She smiled at him when he moved. She was in shorts and a t-shirt. He'd never seen her in shorts before, never seen her so completely relaxed before, or so happy. In an instant, he fell in love all over again, because this was her now and he was the lucky one who got to be right there beside her.

"Hey," he whispered.

She put her book to the side, scooting down on the bed and laying down on her side to face him. "Hey, yourself. How are you feeling?"

"Better than I've ever felt in my life."

She smiled wider. "Me, too. I found your keys in your pants and brought your things in from your car. Do you need anything? Are you hungry?"

He put his hand on her waist and pulled her closer towards him. "Starving," he whispered.

She laughed lightly and kissed his head while he ran his lips over her collar bone and neck. His stomach rumbled loudly and she laughed again. "Let me get you some food."

His knee was feeling better, and he was feeling like he could actually move and stay conscious; the sun was bright in the room and she was emotionally light and happy in his arms, and he didn't want to let her go. He moved his head and found her lips.

"I'll make you a deal," she whispered between his kisses, "I'll go get you some food and I'll bring it to the bed."

He kept kissing her around the smile on her lips. "I'll deliver the food naked," she said enticingly. He grinned and let her go, not thinking she'd actually do it, but he really was starving.

He laid back on the bed while she was out of the room, flexing and moving his leg, thinking about where they went from here and then letting the thought go. Right now he was just going to focus on being there. It was the first time in his life where he didn't feel like he had to plan around a finite around of time, or feel like he had to anticipate an end. The freedom was a little frightening, but mostly exciting. There was no end here, there was just them, and he wasn't going to plan for a direction; he was going to let the future come to him.

Minutes later she was standing in the doorway with a plate in one hand, a mug in the other and not a single article of clothing on. In all of the thoughts he'd had about about Emily Prentiss over the years, this level of complete relaxation and openness had never even entered his mind as a possibility. She was gorgeous, and he was speechless.

She grinned at the expression on his face and brought him his plate and cup of coffee before laying back down next to him. He kept staring at her.

"Are you going to eat your food?" she asked with a smirk.

"I'm a little distracted right now."

She laughed and crawled under the sheet, covering the view. He looked at his plate and saw a large slice of quiche and fresh fruit. He took a bite of the quiche and hummed appreciatively. It was delicious.

"It's leftovers from breakfast at the inn. There's a farmer's market in walking distance and I get the produce there. There's a woman named Gretchen who lives a few blocks away. She's seventy-two years old and one of the loveliest people I've ever met. She raises chickens, and three times a week, I go over and buy fresh eggs from her. I make a variety of different quiches and freeze them, reheating them during the week so there's more than just a continental-type breakfast for the people renting rooms. I'll take you to meet Gretchen today or tomorrow if you're up for the walk. I've told her about you."

He ate and watched her while she talked, her eyes closed and a smile playing on her lips at her life now. "I bought some bikes for people to use while they're here, and boogie boards, and I bought a few kayaks for people to use, too. If you paddle south a little ways there's a great place for tide-pooling. I bought a fire pit and many nights the guests hang out there in the evenings. I've met so many interesting, nice people, and the reviews of this place online have been five stars across the board."

"I'm so glad you love your life here, Melanie," he said.

Her eyes opened and she smiled softly at him. "_Our_ life. You were the only thing missing. You're going to love it, too. Except the cleaning. I have a love/hate relationship with sand now," she said with a chuckle.

He put his plate to the side and reached for her hand. "Our life," he repeated back.

"About the Melanie thing," she said quietly. "We call JJ JJ because of her initials. And there was a couple here last weekend and her name was Cecelia, but her husband called her Cee all the time. You can call me "Em" if you want. Everyone else around here will think it's just a shortened version of Melanie, you calling me by the first letter of my first name. Only you and I will know it's short for Emily."

He smiled so wide he actually felt muscles stretching. "OK, Em."

She reached her hand out and traced the smile on his lips with the tip of her finger. "OK," she whispered.

He moved from his sitting position on the bed and flipped his body so he was partially laying on top of her, kissing her and trailing his lips down her neck.

"In fifteen minutes, I have to go get sheets out of the dryer and get rooms ready for people arriving today," she said.

He trailed his hand down the side of her body and down her thigh, stretching as far as he could reach before moving his hand to her inner thigh and trailing it back up her body.

"Okay, maybe twenty minutes," she breathed.

He moved his mouth and he brushed his lips against her nipple, then smiled against her skin when she gasped and said, "Okay, thirty minutes."

* * *

><p>He got up and stretched, showered and shaved when Melanie went over to the main house to get the rooms ready. After he threw on a pair a shorts, he slowly explored the space she'd created, and quickly realized she hadn't created it just for herself at all. He'd promised her he would get there, and she believed him completely.<p>

There was one long dresser in the bedroom with her clothes in it, and there was a completely empty tall chest of drawers. Sitting on top of that was the copy of Slaughterhouse Five. His dresser.

He opened the closet and found it half empty, a side waiting for him with plenty of empty hangers. He investigated her side and grinned. There were a few nicer outfits in there, but they were largely overtaken by jeans and comfortable looking shirts. On the shoe rack there were a couple pairs of heels, but they were surrounded by sneakers, sandals and multiple pairs of flip-flops. _"I'll wear comfortable clothes and comfortable shoes," _she'd told him nearly eight years ago.

In the living room, he took in the plush, tan colored couch with two comfortable looking accent chairs. There was a pellet stove in the corner. The decor and colors screamed beach cottage, but they perfectly hugged the line between masculine and feminine. He saw empty areas on shelves here and there, like she reserved a space for his personal items. Pushed up against one wall were two desks that fit with the decor. One of them had her laptop on it, and some paperwork, and the other was empty. His.

He glanced at the paperwork and saw it was a printed summary of her expenditures and intake for the past month. He nearly fainted at the amount she was paying in mortgage, tax and insurance on this place each month, but then he saw what she brought in since Memorial Day weekend and relaxed. This place would do okay, better than okay probably.

He turned to the kitchen and saw a small table that sat four with fresh flowers in a vase on it, and just beyond that a pair of glass double-doors that lead to a small patio with two chairs on it, waiting for them. He could see the blue sky and the waves beyond that. He went to the refrigerator to look for a glass of juice, and saw her planning for his arrival had been all-encompassing. The orange juice he liked was in there, along with the beer he preferred and various food items she knew he liked.

He walked back to the bedroom to get a shirt and realized the nine hundred fifty square feet of the cottage felt about twice its size. And there was no sense at all that this was Melanie's house that he was living in. She'd made sure it felt like both of theirs long before he got there. It was perfect, and it was his home now. He couldn't imagine living anywhere else, ever again.

He put on shoes and walked out the front door towards the main house, and saw some of the things Melanie had told him about; the fire pit surrounded by chairs, two kayaks leaning against the side of the house, and a few beach cruiser bikes and boogie boards next to those. And a staircase. Ten steps down to the sand.

Derek looked up at the main house and saw her watching him through an upstairs window, a huge smile on her face. He grinned and made his way inside, and took in the impeccably decorated first floor, a small foyer with a desk for people to sign in, a dining room with a large counter against the wall where he assumed Melanie set out breakfast in the morning. He could catch a glimpse of a bright kitchen, and to the right of the staircase was a huge, comfortable living room.

He slowly made his way upstairs, using his right leg to bear most of his weight, and she was in the hallway holding a stack of folded sheets and towels. "Come on. I'll show you. We've got two rooms open right now, but they're booked for tonight. Check in time starts at 3:00. We should have a pretty easy few days - after today, everyone that's here is staying until Sunday for the July fourth weekend."

The two rooms that weren't occupied were just as perfect as everything else he'd seen so far.

"I can't believe this is yours," he said in awe.

"Ours," she said firmly.

He shook his head slowly. "I didn't have anything to do with this."

She gave him that look where she tilted her head to the side and contemplated him before smiling, "In a lot of ways, I could say you had everything to do with this. You made the vision real because I had someone I felt comfortable talking with honestly for the first time in my life. So, Derek Morgan, it's ours, we, us from here on out. Get used to it."

He laughed. "Yes, ma'am."

"I'm done here. I want to hear about the past few months for you. Are you up for a walk on the beach?"

He smiled and nodded, and was pleased when they got downstairs and outside that she linked her fingers with his. They kicked their shoes off at the top of the stairs on the property. The soft, uneven sand was hard a little hard on his knee, at least at the moment, but they made their way to the flat, damp sand and the walking was pretty easy. He looked out at the water and saw people swimming. "I can swim. In fact, my physical therapist said that swimming is one of the best exercises I can do now. I was thinking of a gym with a pool, but maybe I'll just use the ocean."

Melanie laughed, "Have you ever dunked your body in this part of the Pacific ocean?"

He shook his head. "There are people out there swimming."

"They are insane or in wetsuits."

"How bad can it be, Em?"

She smiled when he called her that, and then she laughed again. "I dare you to get knee deep and then just dive in."

He pulled off his shirt and handed it to her, a smile on his face, but quickly wishing he hadn't accepted the dare once he got knee deep. He took a deep breath and submerged himself into the freezing water, quickly standing and making his way as fast as possible back out of the water.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he exclaimed.

Melanie was beside herself, sitting in the sand and laughing uncontrollably. "The look on your face when you first turned around in that water."

He started laughing and sat down next to her in the sand. She calmed down and leaned against him. "We'll get you a wetsuit."

"We definitely will be doing that."

"I love you, Derek. We're going to have a good life," she said softly.

He smiled. "The best."

He watched her lean forward and rest her chin on her knees, looking out at the water. "I can't believe JJ shot you. I can't believe you went through with it, and you seem okay with it. Are you okay with it?"

He touched her back and replied honestly, "I'm okay. I'm here and I don't want to be anywhere else, but I'm not sure what to do now. It's a big change, but I'll figure it out, or we'll figure it out together. I'm looking forward to the future with you, though."

She turned her head to rest her cheek on her knees and look at him. "I can handle this place on my own if you want to do something else with your days, whatever that is."

"I don't know what that would be. Maybe we can just enjoy the rest of this summer and then think about that."

"Sounds good. How did everyone take it when you left?"

She watched his face while he told her all about it, getting teary when he told her about Penelope. He knew she felt a massive amount of guilt about that one. "I'll buy a place near here soon and she can come out for a long weekend and visit with just me. She hasn't lost me, Em."

Melanie nodded and stood. "It's almost 3:00. I should head back up for when people check in. In the confirmation system, they give me an estimated arrival so I don't have to wait around all day, and both of them said right around 3:00."

She reached her hands out to him and pulled to help him stand without putting too much pressure on his left knee. She kept one hand in his as they walked back towards the cottage. "When I first put this place up online, I blocked out Thanksgiving as unavailable. I don't think there's a chance your mom will recognize me; I was barely around her and it was over a decade ago. So you can invite her here or we can go there."

He stopped walking and wrapped her in his arms. "Thank you," he breathed.

She nodded. "Of course. And I also think I'll pick up a bb gun when we go out to get you a wetsuit."

He pulled his head away from her, perplexed, and she laughed. "You haven't noticed it, but every female within about fifty yards is checking you out. It would be nice to keep up my shooting skills."

He let out a bark of a laugh. "Haven't noticed another woman on this beach besides you."

* * *

><p>He cooked dinner that night and they ate together in the cottage. Just before the sun set, Melanie pulled two beers from the fridge and handed him one. They made their way to the two Adirondack chairs on the back patio, pulling them closer to each other so they could hold hands. It was a clear night, and the sunset was a brilliant, blinding orange and pink.<p>

"Did you know I've taken exactly two vacations that lasted longer than a few days since I joined the BAU?" he asked her.

"Actually, aside from the past few years, I did know that," she said. "It's pretty much the same for me."

"And now our life is like a permanent vacation."

She grinned at him. "A well-deserved one."

"Definitely. You know, you're pretty much perfect at this," he said spontaneously.

She raised her eyebrow. "At what?"

"Relationships."

Her eyes got serious for a second and he was afraid he was going to wish he could take that statement back, but then she laughed and smiled. "You're not so bad yourself."


	11. Chapter 11

_He'd left her with the parting word of "Always," after the case that involved her friend Matthew ended. He'd been hard on her, bordering on asshole, those couple of days, t__rying to protect her and frustrated that he knew something much deeper was going on that she wasn't sharing with him that might help him understand her behavior. _

_The snow was just starting to fall that night when he pulled up in front of his apartment. He let himself inside and immediately went and grabbed a beer before sitting on his couch. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, thinking about everything he'd shared with her a couple years before, and everything she'd shared with him since then. He finally came to the conclusion that she did trust him, so whatever it was she was holding back from him must have been pretty damn bad. _

_He picked up his phone to call her, but then set it down. He'd sat in his car thirty minutes before and watched her walk off alone and she obviously wanted space. He turned on his TV and tried to not think. About an hour later, she showed up at his door, freezing cold, with tears in her eyes. _

_"I told Rossi because he pressed me, and I couldn't tell you because I didn't want you to think less of me. Because it wasn't something done to me, it was something I did to myself." _

_He pulled her inside and helped her get out of her coat before wrapping her in a hug and rubbing his hands up and down her back to try and warm her up. "You can tell me anything," he said to her when she stopped shivering in his arms. _

_He made her a hot cup of tea, and she sat on his couch with a blanket wrapped around her. She told him the whole story about getting pregnant, and Matthew, and having an abortion. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "I wish I'd known from the beginning of this case, and I'm so sorry you went through all of that back then and felt so scared and alone. But, Emily, it doesn't define you." _

_She gave him a small smile at those words and stood up, going to her coat and retrieving a picture, which she handed to him. "__My fifteenth birthday, in Rome. My mom and dad were out of town for several days, and the house attendant who was supposed to be keeping an eye on me with strict boundaries turned a blind eye when I told her I was going to spend the whole day with friends for my birthday. John and Matthew and I spent the day exploring Rome, doing what we wanted." She smiled at the memory. "It was a great day." _

_Derek looked at the picture and gently ran his finger over the face of a much younger Emily. "They were good friends," he stated. _

_"They were." _

_"I'm sorry about Matthew, Emily." _

_She whispered, "Thank you," and sat against the corner of his couch, her knees drawn up and her eyes staring intently at him. "Do you ever have a full day where you just feel completely relaxed?" _

_He set the picture on his coffee table and turned to face her. "Not really. Not in a very, very long time." _

_She nodded again, understanding. "Me, too. The last time was the day that picture was taken. __A couple months after that, I found out I was pregnant and I never really can remember a full day of relaxation after that, because my mind would drift to that time a lot, and when that finally stopped, I was in college and life was stressful, and then there was my career. So that was the last time I had a whole day where not a single bad memory or something stressful or sad entered my mind, on my fifteenth birthday. What about you?"_

_He looked at her and cleared his throat. "My dad took me to a Chicago Cubs game. We left the house in the morning and went out to breakfast, and then went to the afternoon game. He brought me to the field early and some of the players signed my baseball glove. During the game, he held me by my legs so I could reach over the wall and get a foul ball that rolled down the third base line. We went out to dinner and a movie that night, made a whole day out of it. Four days after that, he was murdered," he said softly. _

_She blinked back the tears in her eyes and searched his face. It wasn't the first time the thought crossed his mind to throw all caution to the wind, to forget their jobs and the consequences and just let themselves get lost in each other and forget the sadness, but it was the most powerful the feeling had ever overcome him. He thought about how much he valued and relied on her friendship, and he banished that thought as quickly as it came. _

_She reached out and touched his arm. "We are both a hot mess, Derek Morgan," she said with a sad laugh. _

_He laughed sadly, too. "Maybe we should try it one time. A whole day, no talking about work or anything heavy. Nothing but fun."  
><em>

_She gave him a small grin. "OK. But I'm fairly certain that's a lofty goal. I'm not sure I even know how to really relax anymore for any extended period of time. I'm willing to give it a shot, though."  
><em>

_It became almost a joke after that between the two of them. It was either laugh or cry about it, how they couldn't get far enough away from a case to carve out a time they both felt up to giving one day of pure relaxation a go, and the few times they tried, they inevitably got called into work. _

* * *

><p>That summer was a beautiful, unbelievable assault on his emotions, as his heart went places he didn't even know it could go. He didn't know so many days of consecutive, absolute happiness were even possible. It started his first day there, and continued on his second day, when they went to get him a wetsuit and she got one, too. It was nearly his undoing in the small surf shop, seeing her in that wetsuit and wanting nothing but to get her out of it, right there in the dressing room.<p>

It spiraled from there into a series of ecstatic images that he had to remind himself were real at the end of every day: How they took the boogie boards out and laughed as they rode waves together; how they kayaked to the tide pools and flipped the kayak over when Em leaned forward and tried to put a starfish on his face; how when they'd get out of the ocean, she'd partially unzip her wetsuit so there was just a hit of cleavage showing, and how the sand on her chest would dry and sparkle in the sun. How they both smiled and laughed almost all the time, and her shoulders never went rigid, and she was always affectionate.

He met Gretchen and instantly fell in love with that woman and her chickens, and loved watching how Em adored her. They walked to the farmer's market a couple times a week, and they woke up early in the mornings together and got breakfast ready for the people at the inn. They spent countless nights talking to the guests around the outdoor fire pit, hearing interesting stories. And Em's hand rarely left his.

His knee got stronger and they swam longer distances in that cold ocean water. No matter how much sunscreen Em put on, she got some natural color in her cheeks and a few freckles appeared on her nose, and he could spend an eternity running his lips over her sun-kissed skin and never get tired of it.

They slept a sound, solid eight hours a night, naked in each other's arms. And he woke up each morning marveling at the fact that this was his life and it was so fucking good that it defied all possibility. The bit of pessimist in him who had a series of both longer and shorter failed relationships thought about things crashing down around him, but this wasn't like those other relationships. He and Emily had loved each other for a very long time without acknowledging it, and there was nothing they didn't know about each other. All the joy, relaxation and calm they'd held in reserve because of life circumstances exploded over both of them that July. Together, and finally having the freedom, they discovered they knew how to live crazy happy, and they lived it every day.

The flip side of the coin was that he was still Derek Morgan, and he had to play his role. He kept his promise to Penelope, driving some distance once a week, turning on his personal cell phone and giving her a call. The first time, he drove to San Francisco. "My car just kept going west like it couldn't get here fast enough," he told her. _Not a lie._

The second time, he drove to Pacifica. He parked his car facing the ocean and dialed her number. When she picked up, she said, "It's your lucky day. We're in the briefing room." And he listened and gave vague answers as all of those people he cared about asked him how he was doing. He leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes as their voices washed over him. He had no regrets, but he missed them.

He drove home that evening and found Em in their kitchen making dinner. He stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning his forehead on her shoulder. "When you left for London, how long did it take before you stopped missing all of us?"

She turned in his arms and hugged him. "I never did. I still haven't. I just learned to live with missing them. But over time, I stopped thinking about them so much, except you. I still thought about you every day. I'm sorry, Derek."

"Don't be. I wouldn't trade this life for anything. Really. I was just wondering."

He stepped outside to call his mom, the woman he could be a little more candid with. He asked her if she wanted to come out to California for Thanksgiving and she jumped at the opportunity. He explained that no one knew about Melanie yet, but it wasn't complicated anymore and he was very happy.

"I can tell by your voice that you're happy, Derek, and I'm happy for you, my son. She's hiding from someone?"

He figured his mom might eventually guess something like this, that Melanie was hiding from an abusive ex or something along those lines. And the truth was she was hiding from someone, many someones. "Something like that," he told his mom.

"I don't need to know the story, but I'm glad she found someone like you."

Derek smiled into the phone. "Me, too."

Two weeks later, he made the call to Penelope from Santa Cruz and started planting the next seed. "I really love it here. I'm thinking about getting a house to renovate."

* * *

><p>At the beginning of August, he bought a small hot tub for the back patio and put in a fence so they had privacy. The night it was all ready, and once it got dark, he put on his swimsuit and said, "Come on, Em."<p>

She raised her eyebrow at him. "A swimsuit? Really?" And she stripped off her clothes right there in the kitchen and walked out to the patio, smiling at him over her shoulder. It was a warm night, the area experiencing a heat wave, but the ocean breeze was comfortable.

What he remembered first about the night was the hot water and her resting her back against his chest and both of them staring out at the stars. He remembered his hands feeling so comfortable on her skin; he loved the wonder and new discoveries, but this level of comfort was just as good.

She turned around after a few minutes to face him in the water and kissed him. Her hands ran over his body, and his did the same over hers. After a few minutes, he pushed forward and moved her to the seat on the opposite side of the hot tub, entering her in one swift movement that caused her to throw her head back and gasp. His lips immediately found her neck and they started moving, but after a couple of minutes she gasped, "I'm going to pass out. It's too hot in here."

He was feeling the same way and helped lift her to the edge of the hot tub, but once she was there, he couldn't maneuver his knee in the right position to get any sort of leverage. She smiled at him and touched his face. "Come on, gimpy," she said.

She helped him out of the hot tub and they didn't make it far. She threw both their towels down on the patio, one on top of the other, and used her hands to guide him to lay down. And then all he could remember was her on top of him, her skin with small drops of water on it shining in the moonlight, and the millions of stars beyond her body as she moved over him.

After, she laid her body on top of his and whispered, "We became."

"Hmmm?" he asked.

"We hung in there long enough to become this, Derek. Never in my wildest dreams did I think life could be like this."

And then he remembered clutching her to him and smiling with her in his arms.

* * *

><p>The third Friday in August, he was sitting in a chair outside and Em was mowing the lawn. The pressure of pushing the mower over the inclined lawn was still hard on his knee, so he'd let her sleep in while he took care of breakfast at the inn and now was enjoying the view of her in her shorts, pushing the mower over the yard.<p>

He felt a presence behind him before a familiar voice he'd missed so much sarcastically whispered, "This is what I shot you for, so you could ogle her while she does all the work?"

He sprang up from his chair and wrapped JJ in his arms, both of them laughing together. The lawn mower cut off and Melanie was beside them. JJ glanced at her, her eyes going wide at first, before her hand reached out and touched Melanie's nose gently. "Emily?" she asked.

Melanie nodded and tears came to her eyes before she put her arms around JJ. Derek stood back with a smile on his face while the two of them hugged.

When Emily released her, JJ looked at the both of them. "We had a case. In Fresno. Will has Henry in Louisiana this weekend, and I couldn't stand the idea of being so close and not coming here. When the case ended, I laid it on thick about how it had been a hard one for me, and I was going to take a couple of days to enjoy the west coast, and fly home Monday. I got in a rental car and drove straight here. I tried calling, but neither of you answered."

"The phones are in the cottage," said Derek.

JJ was free and easy with them. "Ahh, the life of not having to have a cell phone attached to your hip."

They laughed and Melanie said, "Let me show you around."

Derek collected many happy memories that weekend: How Em lent JJ some beach-appropriate clothes and they all sat around talking, how JJ couldn't stop smiling at the two of them, how at one point when Melanie went off to the the main house to clean up breakfast, JJ whispered to him, "I can see how it would be worth it, me shooting you. Your happiness is contagious."

But his favorite memory was on Saturday evening, when he went to deal with a couple of guests checking in and returned to the cottage to find it empty. He went outside and his eyes searched the beach and he spotted the two of them sitting in the sand facing the water, and Em's arm was around JJ's shoulder. It was only after JJ left that Derek learned she'd told Emily everything that had been going on with her over the past few years, but he knew instantly, seeing the two of them together on the beach, that he'd made the right decision to get their friendship back together. Emily could understand every feeling JJ experienced better than any of them.

On Sunday night, before they all went to bed, and when JJ had to get up very early in order to make her flight out of San Jose the next morning, Em looked at JJ while she was settling into the sleeper sofa in the cottage. "You shouldn't lie to Will because of me. And he won't tell anyone; we both could have exploded into a million pieces a few years back. He owes me one. I want you to visit again, free and clear. Your whole family is welcome here. Henry would love it. So you do what you think is right, but I don't want you to have secrets from your husband because of me."

JJ nodded gratefully at her. "We'd all love it here."

Em smiled, "You have a free room for eternity."

* * *

><p>The last Sunday in August, he woke up slightly when Em got out of bed way earlier than usual. "Sleep," she whispered to him. "It's a surprise."<p>

He grinned sleepily and dozed for a bit after that, but came awake fully at seven that morning, used to the routine of getting breakfast ready for the guests. He stayed in bed and waited. He heard the door to the cottage open just before eight and heard her voice call out, "Close your eyes."

He smiled and closed his eyes. He heard her walk into the room and felt her sit next to him on her side of the bed. "This place is like a vacation every day, you're right. But it's busy and we have responsibilities throughout the day. We still haven't gotten our full day of complete relaxation after years and years of wanting it."

He moved his head towards her and she whispered. "Keep your eyes closed."

He felt something smooth and slightly heavy placed in his hands. "Gretchen is coming over today to take care of breakfast clean up, and hang out. She'll handle anything that might come up. We have a full fourteen or so hours to have our completely relaxing day, so I thought a combination of both my last relaxing day and yours."

He felt something placed on his head, and had his first thought of what was going on.

"Okay," she said. "Open them."

His eyes first glanced down at the baseball glove in his hands, emotion overtaking him. "Chicago Cubs at the San Francisco Giants this afternoon, seats right on the third base line," she whispered.

And when he looked up he saw she'd dyed her hair back to the color he remembered. He reached out to touch those dark strands gently before pulling the hat from his head and looking at the Cubs emblem on it.

She blinked back tears at the look on his face. "We'll explore San Francisco, go to the game, have dinner in the city. We can even see a movie if you want before heading home."

He moved and crushed her in a hug. "Emily," he whispered.

And she didn't say anything about that. She laughed against his shoulder. "I've never been to a baseball game and I have no idea what in the hell I'm getting into, but I'm sure we'll have fun. We always do. I had to ask a guest here about the third base line and where to buy tickets. I can't hold you by your legs while you try and get a foul ball. You're on your own there."

He laughed and touched her hair again before kissing her.

"OK?" she asked against his lips.

"The best. We've waited a long time for this."

* * *

><p><em>AN: One more chapter, I think. :)_


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N - I wrote the chapter that ended this story, and then decided to save it for later. Still having a hard time letting this one go. So I'm going to stop saying when I think this will end, and just go with it until it feels done. :)_

* * *

><p>Derek glanced at Em as he drove them home from San Francisco and smiled. She was flipping through the pictures on her phone that they'd taken that day, or asked other people to take for them.<p>

"These are the first pictures we've ever taken together," she said.

"We can upload them tonight and get them printed."

"Especially this one," she responded while holding the phone up so he could glance at the picture of the two of them at the baseball game, both of their faces lit up with smiles and pressed next to each other while he held up the foul ball Em had gotten for him.

He laughed lightly. "It really is the best picture ever. I can't believe you caught that ball with your bare hands. I was looking away and the next thing I see is a bunch of french flies fly off your lap and you jumping up in your seat."

She reached out and touched his shoulder, laughing. "A foul ball was a must-have on this day."

He took her hand and kissed it. "Thank you. It was a perfect day."

"It was. And the best part is that we can have days like that pretty regularly, especially when the summer season is over and things slow down. Are you sure you don't want to go to a movie? We have time."

"Positive. I want to go home," he said while glancing at her and watching the smile on her lips. He'd been watching her all day with her newly-dyed hair back to it's original "Emily" color, and just how much that made her look more like her original self. He never forgot she was Emily, and calling her "Em," helped, but he'd spent the past several weeks listening to her introduce herself and talk to the guests in the hotel like she Melanie, following her cover story. He still got to be Derek Morgan, a former FBI agent who had met Melanie when she was working in Virginia. After he was injured in the line of duty, he came to California to be with her. He glanced over at her hair again and smiled while she looked at the pictures on her phone yet again. He'd loved their entire day together, but now he just wanted to get her home.

When they made it back to Monterey, they found a few guests at the inn sitting around the fire pit, and Gretchen sitting there with them telling them some story that was making everyone laugh.

"Come join us," she said enthusiastically when she saw them.

Derek smiled at her. "We had a long day and we're pretty tired. Thank you so much for taking care of things today for us. Do you want me to drive you home?"

"It was my pleasure. I think I'll stay awhile and one of these fine people can walk me home."

The guests around the fire nodded in agreement and Derek walked with Em to the cottage.

She turned and raised her eyebrow at him when they were inside. "Tired?" she asked.

He laughed quietly. "Not at all."

He reached out his hand and ran his fingers through her hair. It was a couple inches longer than it was nearly a year before when he saw her in the bar in Quantico. The extra length combined with the color made him think of the first time he met her, when she shook his hand in the briefing room and introduced herself. He moved his hand and ran his thumb over her eyebrows, now the color they should be.

"Are you going to keep it this color?" he asked, wondering if she had done this just for today, to take them back in time for their day of relaxation.

She gave him a soft smile. "I'll change it back for Thanksgiving, just to be safe, but other than that, yes."

It was difficult to stop smiling enough to kiss her, but soon his elation gave way to passion and she backed them towards the bedroom. He stopped the progression of removing clothing only long enough to turn on the bedside lamp. When she was laying naked on the bed with her dark hair standing out in contrast on the white pillow case, he had a brief flash of the memory of a fantasy, thinking that this was pretty much how he'd imagined she'd look, if they ever got to this point.

She was eager and ready, but there was no way he was going to let their perfect day rush to an end. He kissed her languidly, running his hands softly over her body, and she caught onto his mood, calming herself. He kissed his way down her body, and she sank into the bed, sighing softly, letting the soft touches of his lips and tongue wash over her. He spent several long seconds kissing her inner thighs until she finally squirmed and whimpered, "Please, Derek."

And there was no accent. She did this on occasion in the privacy of their bedroom, and by some unspoken rule, he knew it was his green light to call her Emily. "Emily," he whispered before running his tongue through her folds, both of them moaning in unison, him at the taste of her, and her at the sensations.

He felt her hand land gently on the back of his head, urging him on. He knew her body well enough at this point to know exactly how to move against her and push her over the edge quickly, or keep her hanging on. He moved his arms under her thighs and placed his hands on her hips so she couldn't move, and she groaned and then let out a breath of a laugh in frustration. Her one hand stayed on his head and the other landed on top of the hand on her right hip. After a few minutes, the hand on top of his started squeezing his fingers and he listened as breathy expletives fell from her lips. He looked up and saw her head rolling from side to side on the pillow and he gave in, releasing her hips so she could move against his mouth. Seconds later she moaned loudly and he felt her thighs press around either side of his head and her body quaking around him.

He moved quickly up her body and pushed inside her before she'd stopped shaking, kissing her neck as a she groaned out a "Fuck," and tried to suck in air. He smiled and started moving his hips while she clutched at him. He was surprised when she moaned and clenched around him again just a couple minutes later. He stilled his hips and gritted his teeth, trying to hang on. When she stilled around him, he let out a breath and started moving again.

"Still going strong there?" she asked with a smirk on her face.

He smiled back. "Hang in there, Emily Prentiss. We are just getting started."

He'd called her Emily several times since she came back into his life, but never had used her last name, and it fell from his lips without thought. Her head turned and he raised his to look in her eyes, stilling the movement of his hips. Her hand reached up to touch his cheek and she smiled, then laughed lightly, still breathless. "I'm definitely keeping the hair," she said with a grin before kissing him.

* * *

><p>The first week in September, he purchased a foreclosed home about thirty minutes from the inn. The previous owners had purchased it with thoughts of renovating, but had barely gotten started with the project before running out of money. It was sold as-is, which was fine for Derek, financially and to give him something to do during some weekdays. There was one functioning bathroom, but the kitchen was an empty room with a lot of holes in the wall from a rewiring project that wasn't yet complete. The structure itself was solid, though. It was small and secluded, no neighbors to wonder about a man who was working on a house but never really living in it.<p>

In the middle of September, he asked Rossi to supervise while he had a moving company take his items out of storage in Virginia. Penelope could have done it, but he thought it would be emotionally difficult for her, to watch his furniture and other items getting loaded in a van to move to California. Instead, he told her he needed to do some work at the house before it was fit for anyone to visit, but threw out the second weekend in January. She bought a plane ticket before she'd even hung up the phone.

Weekends were still busy at the bed and breakfast, but by mid-October it was relatively mellow mid-week, and Em started coming to the house with him to help on occasion. She also started volunteering at the library to read aloud during story hours for children and elderly, sharing her love of books with other people. She originally wanted to work with a school-affiliated reading program for disadvantaged youth, but it required being fingerprinted. The money she'd paid was supposed to cover her in this regard, with her fingerprints coming back to Melanie Fielding, but it wasn't something she felt comfortable pursuing, just in case.

The last week in October, they were working together installing cabinets in the kitchen, Em using a power drill for the first time. The mornings and nights were getting much colder, but it was still warm in the mid-afternoon, especially at this house, away from the coast. He stared at her in her jeans and tank top while she used the drill.

"I can feel that look, Derek Morgan," she said with a laugh. "This is supposed to be work time."

"But my furniture is here," he said with a grin as she turned around.

"In a jumble in the living room."

"The couch is accessible," he said hopefully.

She shook here head at him with a grin on her face, put the drill on the ground and walked towards him.

They heard his phone ringing on their way to the couch, but they ignored it, figuring it was a store saying a part or order was in. When it rang a second time a little later, they still ignored it. It barely registered in his mind when it rang a third time because he was completely focused on the body currently above him, the woman who never used her accent when they were making love anymore.

About thirty minutes later, when they were laying on the couch together, lightly dozing, they both heard through the open windows the unmistakable crunch of a car on the gravel driveway. They moved quickly to throw their clothing on, wondering who it could possibly be.

"A delivery?" asked Em.

"Nothing's scheduled," said Derek as he zipped up his jeans.

He pulled his t-shirt on and walked towards the window to peek out before spinning quickly and putting his body between the open front door and Melanie, who was just pulling her shirt over her bra. She looked at him, scared and worried, and he mouthed the name, "Rossi."

Her eyes widened and she nodded and rushed to her purse and pulled out her sunglasses. "I'll go pick up some more screws," she said in a thick accent while picking up her shoes, just as David Rossi made it to the doorway.

Derek turned and saw Rossi on the other side of the screen, a bottle of scotch in one hand and a smile on his face. Derek was elated to see him, but his heart was beating quickly in fear, too, wishing Melanie still had auburn hair.

"Rossi!" he exclaimed.

Rossi opened the door and smiled again at Derek before glancing at Melanie, who bent to put her shoes on her feet.

"I was giving a lecture at Stanford, thought I was going to be in and out and on a flight back to DC, but Hotch called and said the would probably be wrapping up a case in Florida by the time I got there, and they didn't need me, so I switched my flight to tomorrow and decided to come see you. I tried calling on the drive. Figured if you weren't around, I could at least enjoy the area."

Derek moved forward and gave him a quick, firm hug. "It's great to see you." He cleared his throat, "Um, this is Melanie. Melanie, this is Dave. I used to work with him."

Melanie kept her smile small, not showing her teeth, and stepped forward a bit. "It's nice to meet you. I was just about to head to the hardware store. I'll let you two catch up."

Rossi stuck his hand out to her and she didn't hesitate before reaching for it, trying to act relaxed and natural. Derek saw immediately when Rossi caught a glimpse of recognition. If her hair had still been different, it wouldn't have registered, but even though the eyes were covered and the nose was different, her body shape and stature was the same, and in the tank top, that was obvious. That, combined with the hair was enough. He saw Rossi glance at her ear where her hair was pushed behind it and then look down at the hand in his.

Dave glanced at Derek, sadness, hurt, confusion and hope all evident in his face. He reached his other hand out towards Melanie and she pulled away from him. "I really should get going."

Derek cringed. She sounded so scared.

"Come on, Rossi. Let's open up that scotch," he said with passably relaxed voice.

But Rossi was not deterred. He reached his hand out again and touched Melanie's arm and whispered, "Emily?"

He watched Em sigh heavily and then take in a shaky breath. He watched her brief moment of hesitation; she could bolt and leave Derek to answer questions and they could send Rossi home overly-curious and probably pissed off, or she could stay put and deal with this. She pulled off her sunglasses and her eyes were already full of tears. She slowly raised them to Rossi, and Rossi gasped, taking a step back in shock, taking in a shaky breath himself. Derek rushed to Emily's side, his mind racing with what to say, but he watched Rossi gather himself and step forward again. He placed his arms tentatively around Emily and then fully embraced her when he felt her arms reach to hug him back.

After several seconds, he let her go, analyzing her face, and Derek reached for her hand, giving it a squeeze.

"How?" asked Rossi, but then shook his head, probably rushing through the possibilities here. They stood silently and watched Rossi's face as he ran through scenarios, his eyes glancing at Derek's knee several seconds later. He shook his head, and neither Derek or Em could read his expression.

"Dave," she said softly.

"Scotch, definitely," Rossi replied. And then he gave them both a very small smile.

They sat at the table in the dining area, drinking scotch out of paper cups. The first part of the story wasn't too difficult for Emily; she more or less told him the truth, right up to getting to Tennessee. Rossi was empathetic and understanding. Emily paused then and she glanced at Derek, but Rossi held up his hand and stared at Derek. "I don't want or need to know anything else. It's better for all involved."

They both nodded at him gratefully.

Rossi looked around the house. "I take it you don't actually live here?"

Derek smiled and shook his head, and Melanie told him about the bed and breakfast. Late that afternoon, Rossi followed them back to the inn. Derek saw him touch the name plate of "Our Secret" on the gate, the hint of a grin on his face.

"There are three rooms currently open," said Melanie, "and you can have one of them. But come see the cottage."

Melanie was fidgety and nervous about this person she hadn't expected knowing she was alive. Derek kept a hand on her back as Rossi walked around the cottage looking at things. They were asking him to go back to DC with a big secret, and it wasn't that they didn't think he'd keep it, but two of five now knew the truth and Melanie had mentioned on the drive back to the inn that that felt really awful.

Dave picked up the framed picture of the two of them at the baseball game, and they watched his shoulders totally relax for the first time since he'd recognized Emily. He turned to face them and smiled. "It's admirable in a lot of ways, staying in this job at the expense of a personal life. I've had a lot of regrets about it in my life, though, and I've lost a lot. Walking away for genuine love and happiness is something I wish I'd done several times, and it's admirable, too."


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N - Sorry for the delay. I was so sick last week. This is the last chapter for this one. Thanks for all of the reviews and all of the support! PS - I met Paget today! It was awesome! :) _

* * *

><p>Rossi left them on a foggy Thursday morning, with warm and genuinely happy hugs for both of them. Still, after Melanie got breakfast laid out at the inn for the handful of guests that were there, she crawled back into bed at the cottage. Derek was worried and he crawled right in beside her; he'd seen her pull away from him before and he wasn't going to let it happen again.<p>

He laid behind her and wrapped his arms around her. After kissing her cheek and neck he whispered, "You know, if you ever felt unsafe or uncomfortable and wanted to disappear again, I would go with you. There is no way I'm letting you go ever again."

He felt her hand grip his arm before she whispered, "I didn't want this for you. I made a choice well over a decade ago to go undercover with Doyle, and it impacted my life in a way I couldn't predict. You wanted the truth from me when you knew something was going on after he escaped from that prison, and I couldn't tell you because I didn't want you to be in the middle of my mess. Every, single day when I was in Paris, all I wanted to do was call you, but I didn't want you in the middle of my mess. I left and went to London so you could let me go and I could clean up my own mess however I thought best. The most selfish thing I've ever done was coming back to that bar in Quantico and letting you into my life."

He squeezed her tighter to him. "I don't see it that way. You risked everything to let me back into your life, because it's right, Emily. It's perfect and it's right. This is the happiest I've ever been in my life, and every sacrifice was worth it. This doesn't feel like a mess to me."

She turned in his arms to face him. "JJ knows everything, and we didn't tell Rossi because we're trying to protect her. I'm afraid we're systematically creating holes in the team because of me, and I can't stand it."

He kissed her forehead. "I could call JJ right now and tell her about Rossi's visit, and I'd bet my life that she'd say, 'Got it covered, no problem.' She wouldn't think it was a mess at all. You know her as well as I do. She filtered through every possibility before she agreed to help me and decided it was worth it."

"And in January, when Garcia comes to visit you? You're going to have to lie for four days straight."

He paused and considered that. It was true and he knew it. "Worth it," he finally whispered.

"I don't feel unsafe here, Derek. And I'm not going anywhere without you ever again, but I'm not planning to go anywhere at all. This is the end of the road, so to speak. I want to really live, here, with you. It just feels wrong keeping this secret from Penelope, Reid and Hotch, and ask JJ and Rossi to do that, too. I remember when I came back before and how angry and hurt and mad Spencer was, not at me, but at JJ. Could you imagine if he found out now?"

He gently kissed her face. "Which is why it's best if the buck stops here, so to speak. Besides, you and I both know that it's the safest thing for you, and for Easter, and ultimately for JJ, too. There would be so many questions, and Hotch likely wouldn't be like Rossi, turning a blind eye and saying he didn't want to know how I ultimately ended up on disability retirement. He'd protect JJ, but it could get really ugly if it ever got outside the team. This isn't a mess Emily. Rossi is so happy to know you're alive. And JJ, Will and Henry will be here in the spring. Let's just focus on that."

She stared at him a few seconds before finally nodding her head. "We should call JJ. The best thing she can do for herself is to stick to the story that that unsub shot you and never waiver, no matter what Rossi might ask her."

"I'll call her in a bit, but I don't think Rossi is going to say anything to her at all. You know him as well as I do. When he went to bed last night, he probably spent the first thirty minutes absorbing the shock and letting go of the hurt. Then he probably spent a good hour being pissed off at me for asking JJ, a mom with a young child who had everything to lose, instead of him, a man on the cusp of retirement who financially could live well without his pension."

Em propped her head up on her elbow and considered that. "And then he came to the conclusion that you asked JJ because you knew I'd want her back in my life?"

"Maybe. Or maybe because I knew it would be hard for him to lie to Hotch, his best friend, every single day until I got out of there. Because JJ could give her report and they'd let the matter go, but Hotch would ask questions of Rossi, just as friends talking."

She flopped back on her back. "That's probably true. I miss them," she sighed.

"I know. Me, too. But I love you and this life."

"I love you, too, Derek."

He watched her close her eyes and his fingers gently touched her face. She smiled at his touch and the tension he was feeling since she walked back to the cottage waned a bit. She opened her eyes to look at him and studied his face. "I'll never disappear on you again, Derek. Literally or figuratively. I promise."

And the rest of the tension in his body released at those words.

* * *

><p>The Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving, Derek gently rinsed the hair dye out of Melanie's hair in the kitchen sink. When the water ran clear, he brought a towel over her head and gently rubbed it dry. It was a dark auburn, different enough from Emily's black, but not so different that she bothered with the eyebrows this time.<p>

She was nervous, he could sense that. "She won't recognize you, Em," he said softly when she was standing in front of him, her hair still damp and messy.

"I know. I'm not nervous about that. I know it's a crazy thing for a woman who is rapidly approaching fifty to worry about, but what if she doesn't like me?"

He laughed. He couldn't help it. Once he started, he couldn't stop. He laughed and he kissed her, until she was laughing lightly, too. Derek moved his hand to grab hers and pulled her to the bedroom and closed the door so they were facing the full-length mirror there. He put his head next to hers, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"My mom probably would have made an excellent profiler. At least when it comes to her family. I've been here for about five months, and you see these lines right here, by my eyes? They weren't there when I left. Other people might consider them signs of getting older, or all of the sun, but those are lines from laughing and smiling so much the past five months, Em. And I guarantee they're going to be one of the first things my mom notices."

He reached his finger out and gently touched her face. "You have them, too. And you have natural color in your cheeks from being outside so much. You used to hold your shoulders so stiffly, but you're completely relaxed now, nearly all the time. And she's going to notice that, too. She's going to notice two people who are crazy happy and in love as soon as she sees us, and she's going to fall in love with this place, and fall in love with you. There's not a doubt in my mind about that."

Em smiled at them in the mirror. "OK."

He moved his arms to her waist and kissed her neck. She leaned her head against his shoulder so he had better access. "We have a couple of hours before we have to leave for the airport. I could put a little extra glow in your cheeks," he mumbled against her skin.

"The glow from earlier this morning is already gone?" she asked jokingly.

"Not at all. It's just, I know my mom is going to choose to stay on the pull-out couch here rather than at the inn by herself. We should take our opportunities where we can get them, because Sunday is a long time away."

He kissed her neck again and murmured, "Besides, all you have on is this old t-shirt of mine. It's kind of driving me crazy."

Out of the corner of his eye, in the reflection from the mirror, he saw her smile, reach her hands down and grab the edges of that t-shirt. He released her enough so she could pull the garment off and toss it aside. He looked at her reflection then, clad in nothing but panties, staring at his eyes. He took in her body, her perfect breasts, the scars that were part of her, but not at the same time. He traced them with his hand as he watched her in the mirror. They were her, and not her. They were damaging, but he got her back whole. She was someone else in most ways, but herself at the core of her, herself in what she gave and shared with him.

He rested his fingertips on the scar from the branding Doyle gave her and let his palm fall over the scar on her abdomen. "Look at us, Emily. There's never been anything more perfect," he whispered in her ear.

He watched her eyes fill with tears, watched her blink them back, felt and watched her turn in his arms. Felt her arms pull him closer, felt and heard her whisper against his lips, "I know."

* * *

><p>Fran Morgan settled into their cottage like she belonged there, in a way that was completely non-obtrusive and entirely comfortable. Though their pictures with Em's darker hair were temporarily hidden, the evidence of their happy home, their beautiful life was evident in the energy they gave off.<p>

It was a relatively warm Thanksgiving with clear skies. His mom was active and enjoyed walks on the beach with them, and even enjoyed kayak rides out on the water. The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, she sat bundled in layers with them out by the fire pit, telling stories about Derek as a little boy, much to Em's delight.

She addressed Melanie appropriately and there seemed to be no recognition there. She was curious and asked only normal questions, never pressing or pushing. She was his mom, and she was perfect and appropriate, like she always was. That Thanksgiving morning, when Fran shooed him away from the kitchen and Em rolled her eyes at him, he sat drinking coffee not anticipating heavy questions, not wondering what the hell he was doing or wondering if he should be somewhere else. He drank his coffee and watched his mom and Emily start preparing Thanksgiving dinner, standing and insisting on being given a task after a few minutes.

The all laughed a lot. He actually couldn't remember a holiday laughing so much since before his dad died. He wished his sisters were there, and thought maybe they could be next Thanksgiving. The focus of his primary family stopped being the BAU that day, and went back to his actual family, the people who loved him unconditionally and he'd largely neglected for years. He could have both in a lot of ways.

That evening, with Em, Gretchen and his mom, they sat around that small table in the kitchen in their cottage and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner. After Fran had settled on the pull-out couch that night, and he and Em had gotten into their bed, she'd turned to him, gently touching his face. "I didn't know life could be like this," she whispered to him.

On Saturday morning, when Em was at the main house getting things cleaned up and prepared for people arriving the next week, his mom asked him if they could go for a walk on the beach. They were dozens of yards away from the cottage before she spoke.

"When your dad died, I though I'd never recover," she said loud enough to be heard over the crashing waves.

"I remember."

"I was broken for a lot of years."

He reached out and took his mom's hand. "I know." It was the reason he'd never told her about Carl Buford, because she finally seemed like she was getting it together just when he was completely falling apart.

Her next words made his heart race in fear. "When Emily died back in 2011, you flew home for a weekend. You cried on my couch and I put my arms around you and I couldn't understand it totally, because you were as broken as I felt when your dad died, and it didn't make sense."

Derek swallowed and cleared his throat. "She knew me better than anyone," he finally said.

Fran nodded. They walked for several long minutes, neither of them saying anything. Finally his mom squeezed his hand. "You know how close I am to our extended family."

He glanced at her. "I do."

His mom stopped walking. She slowly lowered herself down onto the sand and he lowered himself, sitting closely next to her and looking out at the water.

"If I had a choice between losing your father forever, or losing everyone else in the extended family, I'd choose your father. If he came to me and told me it was either his death, or me, packing up you and your sisters and walking away from everything we knew forever and never looking back, I'd start packing in a second without hesitation. Love like that doesn't come around ever for most people."

Derek turned her head to look at her. He wasn't quite sure what to say. She was being ambiguous and obvious at the same time. She knew Melanie was Emily, he knew it in that moment. But she wasn't saying the words that would push him to make a difficult decision. Searching his mind, he came up with a response. "Dad always knew that, Mom. He knew how much you loved him and that you'd do anything for him."

She nodded her head. "You're so much like him. Loyal and loving, willing to make necessary sacrifices for a good life. You're very fortunate, Derek. You and Melanie could come to Chicago and see the family, or we could come here. You were shot, and you lost your career, but you didn't lose everything, and you gained so much more, and you can still have many of the things you might think you lost."

He read her loud and clear. She knew who Melanie was, but there wasn't a chance anyone else in his family would. And if his sisters miraculously pondered it for even a second, Fran would cover for them. He took his mom's hand in his. "We'd love to visit, or have you all here," he said with a smile on his face.

They sat quietly looking at the water for a long time after that, both with smiles on their faces. Finally, it was Fran who pushed herself up into a standing position and reached her hand out to Derek, who was so much bigger than she was. He could have turned himself over, could have flipped effortlessly on his side and pushed with his right leg to get to a standing position. Instead he took his mom's hand and let her help pull him to standing. They made their way back to the cottage.

Melanie was standing at the top of the stairs when they arrived and they smiled at each other. He had Penelope's visit looming, which would be hard. They had JJ's visit in a the spring, which would be easy and wonderful. And in between that they had each other and a beautiful life. He took in Em's eyes, those eyes that would never let her totally hide from him, and he acknowledged how they'd been altered by their jobs and life in so many ways.

He got to the top step and put his arm around her, as smile on his face. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Altered, but not broken. Beautiful and together.


End file.
